


Future Active

by Guede



Series: The Time Travel Grammar Book [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Hale Family, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst and Humor, BAMF Lydia Martin, BAMF Stiles, Baby Werewolves, Babysitter Scott McCall, Background Character Death, Brother-Sister Relationships, Christmas, Cock Warming, Dom/sub Undertones, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Moral Ambiguity, Multi, Nipple Play, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Pack Bonding, Pack Dynamics, Pack Politics, Peter Feels, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Single Parents, Slow Build, Talia Hale Feels, Trauma, Werewolf Culture, Young Chris Argent, Young Hales, Young Peter Hale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-06-07
Packaged: 2018-07-11 11:40:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 45,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7048204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And now it’s time to deal with the mysterious monster who probably killed Talia’s and Peter’s parents.  Should be easy, especially with time-surfing Stiles, Scott and Lydia, and a newly-wolfed Chris, but things just always seem to come up.  Like Christmas, and teenage Peter’s first shady boyfriend in Stiles, and as always, Hale family history.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Stiles dusts his hands off, and then steps back to consider his and Lydia and Deaton’s work. In this time frame, the Nemeton hasn’t been cut down yet, so it’s not all half-dead and bitter about not being appreciated for the semi-wild card, totally amoral thing that it is, but it’s still not exactly friendly. And it’s a plant and all, so of course they can’t explain that it’s nothing personal, they just don’t want to deal with it randomly powering up whatever the hell is running around the preserve.

“I think that actually worked,” Deaton says, staring with no little amount of awe at the slowly fading sigils that encircle the tree. “I’ve never heard of anything remotely like that.”

“Yeah, well, learn a new thing every day, right?” Stiles says.

So he’s being patronizing and whatever. So even when he not only knows what he’s doing, but also has the skills to back up the knowledge, putting a Nemeton under wraps is still pretty exhausting. And that’s on top of redoing the wards on the house and all the alarm beacons he’s got scattered around town, because that goddamn shadow monster got through his work. It got through his _work_. They might still be pinpointing what it is, but Stiles just isn’t going to let that stand.

Not to mention, he thinks with a half-stifled yawn, the whole healing Talia’s insides deal. All in all, he’s done a lot of major magical shit in the past week, he’s still looking at a lot more, and he doesn’t really want to waste the energy on bringing Deaton up to speed.

Anyway, Lydia’s already stepped in, pointing out to Deaton the sigils that he needs to keep meddling druid hands away from, or else she’ll bring down hell on his head and then optimize it for deterrence. She…is spending an awful lot of time working with Deaton lately, and Stiles does not think that it’s because she likes him any better. And Stiles means to look into that, he really does.

It’s just he pulls his phone out and damn it, they’re running late. “Hey, I gotta—”

“Don’t forget to stop by the haircare section, we’re running low on conditioner,” Lydia says. She hauls Deaton up by the arm to point out something, and then lifts her head just as Stiles is sneaking off. “And remember to get the right one this time, or else _you’re_ unclogging the plumbing—”

“I know, I know, nix the extra-moisturizing stuff, I got it,” Stiles mutters. Not like it’s his fault that the Hales all have thick hair, and that, combined with over-thick conditioner, their cast-offs turn into clumps strong enough to resist industrial-grade acid.

Stiles gets to the cars and pops behind the wheel of the SUV, and then legs it to the high school as fast as a few well-placed invisibility cantrips can get him. As it turns out, he’s not too far behind: the buses have left, but the parking lot still has a fair number of cars trying to get out of it, and there are enough students milling around the front sidewalk that Peter has a visible wake, pushing through them.

Peter opens the door to shotgun and hooks his hand around the far side of the seat, leaning in between that and Stiles to drop his bag in the back. Then he starts to swing back, except he gets lost or something and seems to think that the seatbelt catch works by inserting his tongue in Stiles’ mouth.

So…Stiles kisses back, because what the hell, even if Peter wasn’t legal now, a school administration who doesn’t even check up on a student missing for five straight days isn’t going to look into that. And Peter makes a ridiculous little surprised noise, like he really thought he’d blindsided Stiles with the surprise make-out, and his hand slips and he nearly drops on his ass out the door. Stiles has to grab him by the arm and help haul in his feet, and then Peter twists around and plops into the seat, looking all annoyed at being shown up and flustered about the kiss and just a little wistful, with that sideways glance.

Whatever the hell Lydia and Scott think, the correct word here _is_ ‘adorable,’ and Stiles means that both straight-up and ironically and, honestly, a little incredulously. Because Jesus, but macking on a teenage Peter with a crush wasn’t ever in the time-travel agenda. “I take it we’re clearing up the gossip party line? Or are we going for extra-soapy and trying to convince them we’re in an incestuous threesome?”

Peter’s got the door shut but he fumbles again, trying to put on that seatbelt, because being a werewolf is not a valid excuse to seatbelt laws. “Sometimes I really wonder about you,” he mutters. “I don’t think it can all be just the time-travel, or the magic, or the…the…”

“Tragic backstory?” Stiles says, half-distracted as he worms his way into the line of exiting cars.

“I guess,” Peter says. He flops back in his seat, then smiles with just a touch of smarm and waves at a group of girls standing on the last corner before they hit the road. “Anyway, doesn’t matter, I don’t need to deal with any of them till after the holidays. By then they’ll probably think Talia is dating _Chris_ , of all people.”

“Okay, I know we kid, but I might just need to come back to school with you if they go with that one.” Stiles leans over the dash, trying to figure out if the person two cars up is going to turn right or not, and then sits back. “Lighted fuses we don’t need to be adding to the whole flour warehouse we’ve already got going.”

Peter snorts, but he’s a little distracted himself, even though he’s turned his head in the opposite direction as his window. “I know. Though it wasn’t our idea to have Chris go out with Talia on the last patrol.”

“Yeah, well, it was either that or have him spend his second-ever full moon with you, and I do actually think you preferred hanging out with Scott and the pint-size wolvies,” Stiles says.

That earns him another snort from Peter, but it’s just keeping up appearances on Peter’s end. Even with the shadow monster mystery, they’d all needed a little air after the showdown with Gerard Argent and murderous-not-Peter-uncle Carlo. The town was finally free of hunters, and Stiles _had_ managed to drive off the shadow thing, so they’d figured it was safe so long as everybody went out in groups.

Which is still pretty much modus operandi for the time being, though the Hales are getting increasingly restless. Laura’s started sneaking into the garage and then claiming she’d smelled her father, and Peter’s actually volunteered to go on patrols with people besides Talia or Stiles to get out of the house. And Stiles is sure that’ll just get worse now that Peter doesn’t have school to distract him.

“What are we getting, again?” Peter asks just then. “Clothes and toiletries, right?”

“Yeah, and Lydia needs some new DVDs, and I think I heard you promising Cora a new pacifier if she gave you your shoe back, so I actually figured we’d just drive to the mall,” Stiles says, looking over. “You have other plans or something?”

Peter blinks hard, starts to look irritated, and then switches to a sudden, vaguely familiar sly look. He makes sure he catches Stiles’ eye, then presses himself back into his seat, his arms going up and back to stretch over his head. Then he lets them flop down and tilts his head up as his eyes half-close. “Nope. Exams are done and I’m a maladjusted teenager with a family that scares everybody in town. My schedule’s clear.”

“You say that like you’re hoping we’re sneaking off for a little bloody mayhem,” Stiles says, amused. The moves are all ones he recognizes, but he has to admit, he’s still not over how…how unmistakably different the intent is. It’s not even something he has to think about, registering down to the unconscious level; he has to think about it to figure out why he’s not noticing it.

“I know we’re just trying to sneak off so you can do that gift-shopping you promised Talia, since we all were too tired to bother with Thanksgiving,” Peter says. He’s a little irritated again, probably covering for failing hopes, and he’s starting to get all pink across the cheekbones.

Stiles laughs under his breath to hide how that just—so Peter’s adorable, sure, but he’s also just bitter in a completely otherworldly way compared to the other, older Peters Stiles has met. Those Peters were cynical as hell, but they never had any problem believing that, no matter how people got in their way, they’d eventually manage to claw their due out of the world. But this Peter, on the other hand, this one’s obviously been disappointed just as often, but he’s still young enough to hope—and still young enough to hurt himself trying not to.

“Well, also, the mall still has my favorite ice-cream shop, and I’ve been wanting to hit that up since we got here, but haven’t managed it yet,” Stiles says. “It closed something like a year after I turned eighteen, in my timeline.”

Peter sneaks an interested glance at Stiles, as if they don’t both know Peter gobbles up any tidbit about their original timeline. “We have an entire freezer of ice cream at home.”

“Actually, we don’t, your sister finally got around to talking to Scott and he’s trying to switch Derek to veggies. And besides, even when we did, we didn’t have half and half peanut butter and licorice,” Stiles says.

“That sounds disgusting,” Peter says, now staring openly at Stiles. He pauses, thinks about it, and then shakes his head. “No, that’s disgusting. If you get that, I’m not kissing you.”

He gets a little loud and fake on that last part, as if his bravado started to cave in. Then he ducks his head and pretends that his hair is urgently in need of mussing, his eyes sliding away towards the window on his side.

“Fine, then kiss me before I eat it,” Stiles says, and when Peter looks up, there’s this quick flash of delight on his face before he attempts to look indifferent again. And it might be over before Stiles can even blink, but it’s as bright as it’s fragile, and that, Stiles thinks, that’s the biggest difference about this Peter. 

Other Peters, Stiles has wanted to do things with besides just kill them out of sheer exasperation. He’s wanted to help them, to reason with them. Even to get friendly with them. But this one is definitely the first one he’s ever wished he won’t disappoint.

“Maybe,” Peter mutters, still going with the sidelong looks. “If the ice cream’s decent.”

“I think the ice cream will be fine,” Stiles says after a moment. He waits a beat too long, and he knows Peter’s noticed, so he changes the subject to the latest research on the shadow monster. 

Ice cream and magic, and this Peter’s happy. Stiles would like to say he’s got a handle on it, and Peter’s got nothing to worry about from him, but…that’s the other thing, he thinks. If things go wrong this time, he’s pretty sure it won’t be Peter’s fault.

* * *

Does Talia regret suggesting that Peter pay more attention to Stiles?

Well, she’s Peter’s older sister, and she’s always going to worry that he’ll get in over his head, and she really does not think it’s unreasonable to think Stiles poses a legitimate concern there. And it’s not because she still doesn’t trust their motivations. She…has complicated feelings about that, but at this point, having survived Carlo’s attack only thanks to Stiles and Scott’s intervention, she’d be ungrateful at the very _least_ if she didn’t accept that they mean well.

It’s not really that Stiles is—well, appears to be several years older than Peter. Sure, Talia’s had that thought, but they’re werewolves and age doesn’t work any closer to normal for them than it does for time travelers. Besides, Talia would be a hypocrite if she rested her concerns solely on that, considering when she started up with Mark.

She’d be a bad sister if she also just used Mark as a reason to cut off all romances going forward, she thinks grimly. All Talia needs to do is look at their parents, and how they treated her and Mark just because of her father’s early relationships. If they hadn’t fought so hard against Mark, maybe Talia wouldn’t have insisted on ignoring his flaws for so long.

“It’s just that, well, it’s not just being older. It’s what you’ve seen and done too, and they don’t exactly hide that they’ve gone through a lot,” Talia sighs. “Or that it’s done a lot to them. And look, I admire them for being strong and keeping their heads up, and learning from their mistakes, but at the same time…I guess it’s the mom in me, I can’t help wondering whether your uncle could just find a nice boy or girl who doesn’t sound sometimes like they have worse nightmares than I do.”

Cora looks up from Talia’s lap with big, uncomprehending, curious eyes, and then she raises both arms to flutter half-curled hands just under Talia’s nose. “Pee-taa?”

“You know, just between you and me, and if you remember this when _you’re_ a teenager, don’t take it the wrong way,” Talia mutters. She shifts to prop one elbow on her knee, and then leans her cheek against her hand. “But I also regret not keeping up with anybody else in town. I really could use somebody adult to talk to about this, even if they don’t know anything about werewolves.”

“Peee-taaa?” Cora says again. She can’t understand Talia but she can pick up on tone, and werewolf children are so much more sensitive to their parents’ moods. Her brow is starting to furrow and Talia can hear an anxious note in her voice.

Talia makes herself smile at her girl, and then she cradles her arms under Cora, lifting as she gets to her feet. She can hear Scott coming up the stairs, his muffled voice hopelessly trying to warn Derek and Laura not to run.

When Talia opens the bedroom door, it’s just in time to see Laura trip and fall, and bang her arm against the edge of the step. Laura skids back into Scott’s hands, looking shocked, and then she grabs her arm and whimpers. It’s not even broken, Talia would’ve heard that, and the bruise will be gone before Talia can even get her daughter’s sleeve up to see, but both Laura and Scott look mortified.

“I’m so sorry,” Scott stammers, setting Laura down. “I—”

He’s interrupted as Derek barges around him, scooting up till he’s next to Laura, who jerks back, then frowns as Derek peers at her arm. Then Derek turns around and he scowls at Scott. “You moved,” he says. “You should’ve just stayed, you wouldn’t have gotten in her way.”

“Yeah…yeah!” Laura says, catching on and pushing up shoulder-to-shoulder with Derek.

Scott blinks rapidly at the pair of them, and then he laughs. It’s not—not a cruel or mocking laugh, but it’s got a strange, wistful edge to it. He’s clearly remembering some other version of Talia’s children and they’re not old enough to grasp that, but they’re old enough to understand that he’s not treating them the way anybody else would.

They edge away and Scott’s smile immediately falls. He starts to apologize again, looking towards Talia, but she just shakes her head and comes over to gently bump Derek and Laura with the back of her knees. “Don’t blame people when you all were involved,” Talia tells her children, firmly but without anger. “You need to take responsibility when you’ve done something careless, or else you won’t be a good pack. You hear me?”

“Yes, Mom,” Derek and Laura say, abashed. Laura fidgets, then turns around and looks up at Scott.

“Sorry,” she mutters. Then she nudges Derek, who’s belatedly twisted around too and who’s guiltily opening his mouth. “I already said sorry, I’m the alpha. I speak for the pack.”

“If Derek thinks he should speak up too, you should listen,” Talia says, but gently. Her daughter can be bossy, but better to help her tone it down than struggle to get her to see that being a good alpha doesn’t depend on other people’s ideas of what an alpha should look like. “But helping him when he’s shy is a good idea, Laura.”

Derek makes a face, but he’s looking at the steps as he does it. “’m not shy, just tired. Mom, can I have the good pillow? Laura had it last nap-time.”

“We just bought new pillows,” Scott says. He pauses for a second, and when Talia doesn’t interrupt, bends down to Derek and Laura’s interested faces. “And if one of you gets all the way to the bedroom without pushing the other, they get first pick.”

Laura and Derek scoff, but they obligingly head for the bedroom. They’re glancing over their shoulders as they go, excitement fading to a nervousness that makes the center of Talia’s chest clench. She moves aside for Scott, but he just glances after them, hanging back as Talia resettles Cora, who’s starting to reach for hair to chew on, in her arms. His hands twitch as if to offer to take Cora, but Talia shakes her head.

“I’m going to get her something to drink, and then I’ll bring her up to nap with the others,” Talia says. She suppresses a sigh of relief as she hears Derek and Laura finally go into the bedroom, then lifts her head as she catches the sound of the SUV returning. “Are Lydia and Deaton still out in the preserve?”

“No, Deaton’s back in town, but he has a surgery to do at the clinic so he’s there,” Scott says. “He’ll be back for the meeting.”

Talia raises her brows. “So Lydia is still there.”

Scott isn’t particularly good at hiding his emotions, nor does that seem like a skill he’s interested in developing. He’s not comfortable with that either, it’s clear it worries him, and it’s clear he knows that Talia has picked up on that. But for all that, he’s no more willing than the rest of them to let Talia in on the reason.

“She said she’ll be back in time,” he simply says. “I guess you could try calling her, but reception’s pretty spotty out there and I don’t know that she’s hit the highway.”

“I thought we all agreed that we’d go in pairs till we at least figured out where that thing is based,” Talia says. “Banshees aren’t immune to all forms of spirits.”

Scott twitches a little, as if he’s trying to hide a grimace. “She’s not actually in the preserve,” he finally admits. “Just near it. Anyway, if she was in trouble, Stiles or I would know.”

“But you’re here, and if I’m not mistaken, that’s Stiles arguing with my brother about whether we should hide the kids’ presents behind the pots, so the racket will let us know if they’re getting into them, or whether they should throw off the scent by sticking them behind the spices,” Talia says, very pleasantly.

“I know,” Scott says, a little shortly. He pauses and leans back and looks at her, and then just lets out that laugh again. “I know, but Lydia’s Lydia. Trust me, she’ll make this meeting.”

Talia starts to say that she isn’t asking after Lydia’s promptness, but Scott shows a little aggression for once and moves past her without stopping. If she wants to keep them talking, she’ll have to reach out and stop him…and she has an armful of an increasingly cranky toddler who is expecting a drink and who hasn’t gotten one yet.

So Talia lets it go, and goes into the kitchen to feed her child. Stiles sees her well ahead of time, but still makes a broadly comic attempt to hide the toy sports car he’s holding, which is going to be for Derek anyway. Then he excuses himself to go rotate out Lydia’s DVD collection, while Peter looks on with an expression that her brother probably thinks passes for fond indulgence, but is really just shy of cartoon hearts in the eyes.

Then Peter looks at her, the moment Stiles is out of earshot. “Don’t scare him,” he mutters.

“Scare him?” Talia says. “Scare. Him.”

“Well, I just—look, now that we’re all actually talking to each other like normal people, I really like him, and I don’t want this to turn into another Hale family thing, all right?” Peter mutters, rubbing at the side of his head. Then he moves back as Talia comes forward, swinging his arm to pull open the fridge so she can get Cora’s sippy cup. “And you know I don’t mean stale death threats. I still think he’s thinking about other timelines sometimes.”

Talia nearly dribbles the juice into Cora’s nose instead of her mouth. “What?”

“Not like that!” Peter hisses, poking his finger out. He swipes the sippy cup spout into Cora’s mouth and then stays crowded up so that he can glare into Talia’s face. “Not the whole evil me thing, that’s deader than Uncle Carlo. I meant…well, I told you about the virus in their timeline, and I just…I just think sometimes he’s still going over the ones they couldn’t fix.”

“Well, maybe I meant that,” Talia says after a moment. Very much under her breath, but Peter’s right there in her face, so when he stiffens up, she can see exactly how much of that is due to fear. And that’s too much, and honestly, Talia wonders for a second, do they ever get to just be—be not afraid? “Peter, I’m not trying to act like you’re a baby, I just—”

“I think he cut back on the scent maskers,” Peter mutters. He looks hard at her, as if she wouldn’t immediately recognize the importance of that without him staring her into it, and then he drops his eyes and looks at Cora. “Can I just—can I just see where this goes? I just…I like him. And I did think about what you said, so don’t say I never listen to you, and…and I want to see. I can’t tell if it’s mixed up with other stuff or not if I don’t give it some time. All right?”

Talia presses her lips together, but if they’re going to talk about scents, well, under Peter’s ire he smells far too edgy, and she knows he’s expecting her to just cut him off. They’ve started putting their relationship back together, and she thinks they’re on a good path, but whenever he’s tested, Peter’s first reaction is still to fall back and get himself ready to be stopped. 

Her little brother, who’s always been as ready as an alpha to question things when they don’t feel right to him, and who was willing to risk his life and take on family for her. Sometimes Talia can’t help but think their parents deserved what they got.

And then she feels guilty, because no matter how terrible they were, they did raise her and her brother, and they did die defending Hale territory. They deserved a comeuppance, but not like that. “All right,” she says, after a moment.

Peter draws back, his expression half-set to protest, and then he really registers what she’s just said and he just stares at her.

“All right, all right, you wouldn’t be a teenager if you didn’t get a date or two in with someone shady,” Talia mutters. “Though spare me the curfew-breaking, please?”

“I want to have a trial period, not get myself killed,” Peter scoffs, though he’s got a smile sneaking around the edge of his mouth. “I’m not planning to pull the silly horror-movie routine and go out and get caught by the homicidal shadow.”

Talia glances down and sees Cora’s almost done with the sippy cup, and swivels around Peter to get at the sink. She gives him a nudge with her shoulder as she does and he makes a face, but pivots to flick at her ponytail as she passes him. “Don’t think I won’t have a talk with him either,” she warns him. “I’m not going to _scare_ him, but I have a few things to say, and I wouldn’t be your sister or your alpha if I didn’t.”

“Well, try and make it creative, at least?” Peter says. “I get the impression he’s heard a lot of death threats already.”

She glances at him and Peter shrugs, a bland look on his face. Talia muffles a chuckle and puts the cup in the sink for rinsing, and then grabs a dish-towel and dampens it to wipe off Cora’s face while she’s there.

“Anyway, I don’t _mind_ if you talk to him,” Peter adds. “I just hope you remember you still owe _me_ a shovel talk. I wasn’t old enough the last time that came up.”

Talia glances up at Peter, and then shakes her head at him. He’d smelled a little nervous there but she can hear his heartbeat slowing. “Well, all right, but I think you’ll be too old by the time it comes up again,” she mutters.

She can sense him looking at her, but Peter doesn’t say anything. Just scuffs his feet a few times, then grabs the last bag of presents and heads down to the basement to help Stiles. Hopefully. Come to think of it, if Stiles isn’t using his scent-masking charms, she might want to ask him to share those.

A heartbeat approaches the back door, pauses, and then Chris deliberately stomps on the back patio before he comes into the kitchen. Talia knew he was out there, but it’s…it’s polite of him, and she appreciates that, and she shakes her head again, but at herself. There’s just so much to do, and every time she starts to get hold of one part of pack life, another part rears up its head.

“We should talk,” she says, putting the towel back on the counter.

Chris stops halfway across the kitchen—he’s got a handful of cut herbs, so she assumes he was trimming Stiles’ ever-expanding container garden—then takes a deep breath and faces her. “I know the deal’s over,” he says slowly. “But…look, you know I don’t have anywhere else to go. Or anyone who w—needs me around, so I’ll still keep up my end and watch over your family.”

“That’s not what I…” Talia feels more than hears the start of a fussy noise from Cora and bites down two kinds of exasperation “…look, now’s not the time, but I don’t want to keep having to renegotiate this. Think about that and when the shadow monster’s dealt with, we’ll talk.”

She knows he’s surprised, but she really can’t deal with this right now, so she just walks out with Cora. Her daughter fidgets again, then lets out a soft whine, one chubby arm reaching down to flail at the edge of her diaper.

“I know, I know, I can smell you too,” Talia sighs. “Just a couple more steps and Mommy will get you clean, all right?”

“Mama,” Cora says. She stops pulling at her diaper and then reaches up towards Talia, her hand thumping against Talia’s breast. “Mama al-al-aaaal-fa.”

“Well, I try,” Talia says. “God knows. I try.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The clumps of hair mixing with conditioner thing is true, first-hand experience. That stuff is tenacious to unclog.


	2. Chapter 2

Since half of them are no longer out of the house at any given time, keeping tabs on hunters around town, they’ve expanded the nightly meeting Lydia already had set up with Talia to group dinner and then a post-meal research briefing on the monster. Stiles wanted to have the order the other way around, arguing that it was better to have a set cut-off for discussions so they wouldn’t end up going at it all night, but Scott and Lydia had voted him down. 

Lydia’s rationale had been that it was better to get any knives and other potential weapons out of the way before they started disagreeing with each other. For some reason she always forgets that a mentally blocked Stiles is more dangerous without a weapon than with one, since at least then you only have to watch his hands.

“I swear to God, at this point we might as well just try random parts of the Saaamaaa Ritual,” Stiles says, tossing himself back-first onto the couch. He falls crooked, all of one leg and most of another sliding off, and absently wraps his arm over the top of the couch to keep from completely crumpling to the floor as he glowers at the ceiling. “This just isn’t holding together. Chris says he saw it cross the fifth sigil but I used that and it ran away—”

“Did it really run?” Talia says. She frowns and rests her forehead against her folded hands, then raises her head. “I know I was, well, not really in the best position to see at the time but for some reason I keep thinking it was leaving, not running.”

She looks at Peter, who’s leaning against the side of her armchair. He shrugs but he’s got a thoughtful look on his face. Which drifts when Stiles slumps just a little more off the couch, and ends up flipping the hem of his shirt off his belly.

“I…don’t remember, and anyway, isn’t that reading a feeling into it?” Peter says. When Talia looks at him, he holds up his hand to signal her to wait for something, looking a little exasperated, and then he looks at Chris. “You said it had empath traits.”

“I said I got a feeling off it. I don’t know if it’s an empath, I wasn’t around it for long enough to test,” Chris says slowly. “But…yeah, that feeling I got. I don’t think I just made that up. I think it was coming from the thing.”

Lydia stretches her leg out and kicks Stiles in the shin. Peter’s brows twitch together and he looks disapproving, and then he ducks his head as Stiles jerks himself up, yelping. “Ow, Lyds,” Stiles says, folding over and grabbing his shin. Then he looks up. “Okay. Okay, so what if we hold a séance and see who comes up?”

“You have to be joking,” Deaton says, breaking in for the first time. He looks appropriately nervous about it, but is holding himself as if he means to keep it up till somebody stops him. “A séance in the preserve? Do you have _any_ idea what might show—”

“Yes,” Lydia and Scott say, and if anything, Scott’s giving Stiles the more disapproving look.

Stiles sighs and hikes himself back onto the couch, and then grabs his laptop from the coffeetable. He taps at it, then hooks his hand over the top of it and looks at them all. “Fine. I will not get possessed again. Even if honestly, sometimes, it’s a lot quicker and Lyds can exorcise me in her sleep now.”

“Again?” Peter says. He looks much more disturbed than interested, and then he flushes when they look at him. Flushes, then jerks up his chin and stares challengingly at them.

“Anyway, um, so let’s just…I don’t know,” Stiles mutters. For some reason he’s also acting a little embarrassed, rubbing at the side of his face and avoiding Peter’s gaze. “I just can’t get why we can’t figure out what the hell it is. This should not be that hard. It’s fucking semi-incorporeal, it’s not like there’s a lot of that floating around.”

“Well, maybe we should just go over what it’s not again?” Scott suggests, trying to jog Stiles out of his usual downwards spiral of frustration.

Lydia grimaces and Scott’s eyes flick over to her, just before Stiles lets out a near-werewolf snarl of frustration and slams down the laptop lid to glare at Scott. “That’s the whole _problem_ , Scott. We can’t rule out anything because the goddamned thing keeps contradicting itself! First it’s like some kind of poltergeist, except it can touch cold iron, and then it’s maybe a renegade dryad or forest whatever, but Chris saw it cross wards at the Hales’ place, and _then_ —”

“Stiles,” Lydia says.

“Then I figure fine, okay, it’s gotta be somewhere in the demonic hierarchy, even if we don’t have any cases of possession, but it busts right through Deaton’s wards!” Stiles snaps, still looking at Scott. “And as much as I’d like to blame ol’ Alan here for just not being up to scratch, even if he’s your favorite—”

“Stiles,” Lydia says, louder.

Except she’s overridden by Scott, whose eyes suddenly flare red as he jerks forward. He doesn’t move his feet, it’s just from the heads up, but Peter shoves himself off the armchair, his eyes wide and glowing blue, half-throwing himself between Scott and Stiles before Talia grabs his wrist. Though Talia’s alarmed as well, pushing herself out of the chair with her other arm, and Chris is half-out of his chair, ready to jump into the mess too.

“He’s _not the same guy_ ,” Scott snarls at Stiles. “For God’s sake, Stiles, you’re always up in my face about why can’t I just leave the other ones behind and stop acting like I’m still looking for somebody to be my dad for me, why don’t _you_ just leave it once in a while?”

Stiles is probably the only person in the room who isn’t in an attack or a defense position. He’s still sitting on the couch, his jaw hanging a little, blinking owlishly up at Scott. He starts to reply, stops himself, and then lifts his hand halfway towards Scott before abruptly detouring it to grab at the back of his head, like he does when he’s feeling ashamed of himself.

“I, um, I actually didn’t mean—wow, man, are you okay?” he says. “You haven’t mentioned your dad for—I mean, I just meant, Deaton’s kind of behind on the magic. This Deaton. He just doesn’t know—”

“Because he’s younger so why are we expecting him to know everything he’ll learn in the next decade? He shouldn’t even have to, if we do our job,” Scott snaps. “And he’s not my favorite, I just miss him, and am I not allowed to miss people who weren’t perfect? _You_ do.”

Then he spins on his heel and stalks off. Stiles and Lydia look at each other, because Scott’s right and they aren’t doing their job right now, and then Stiles belatedly starts to get up, only to pull himself back, brows raised, as Chris nearly trips over a lamp power cord hurrying after Scott.

Chris catches up somewhere in the kitchen. He doesn’t manage to say more than Scott’s name before Scott cuts loose with a snarl, low and rumbling and absolutely not taking any disagreement right now. Then the back door bangs shut, and a few minutes later a very tight-faced Chris edges back into the living room.

“Just let him go run a little,” Stiles mutters, pushing his face into his hand. “I think Scott’s just…just kind of…and so Deaton, by the way, it was…I meant…”

“Oh, I didn’t take it personally,” Deaton says. He shakes himself, but still looks shellshocked. “Honestly, I agree with you. The longer I’m here, the more I realize just how outdated our training really is. I…will he be all right? We actually haven’t really talked, and I don’t know anything except that you’ve met me—met versions of me before, but if I can—”

“No. No, that’s not going to help. I’ll just—I’ll just talk to him when he gets back,” Stiles says. “That wasn’t even really about you anyway.”

“Is that going to help?” Chris says, sitting back down. “Sounded like you’re the one he’s mad at.”

Stiles slowly raises his head, a mildly skeptical look on his face. That alone is more than enough to make Chris rethink his verbal jab, and Chris is already pulling his shoulders down when Peter clears his throat. “Speaking of no cases of possession,” Peter says. “ _Are_ we sure about that?”

“Okay, no. Just—no,” Stiles says sharply. Then he makes a face, and visibly pushes down on his irritation as he looks up at Peter. “Look, Scott’s just—we have bad days, okay? We all do, and—”

“Peter,” Talia says suddenly. She cocks her head, then glances up at the ceiling. “Peter, is that—that’s Derek.”

“The door must’ve woken him up,” Peter mutters, also looking up. He takes a too-hasty step towards the stairs, then hesitates, glancing back at Stiles.

Who’s chewing on his lip, but his eyes keep flicking down to the laptop and books and assorted papers scattered over the coffeetable. Peter’s posture sags ever-so-slightly and he turns around, and then Stiles suddenly gets up, swinging around the coffee table with a quick, wary glance towards Talia.

“I guess till Scott comes back, I’m up on hare-raising heroics storytelling duty,” Stiles says, with just too much casualness.

“That’s Laura,” Peter can’t help pointing out, but he’s shifting over so Stiles can walk next to him.

Lydia studies Talia, who watches the pair of them with a suspiciously bland expression as they go up the stairs. Talia seems to look as much at Peter as she does at Stiles, but she doesn’t give off any other clues. Her hands have gone back down to fold in her lap and they look relaxed and claw-free.

“I really wish I could offer more,” Deaton says. When they look back at him, his shoulders move in a startled, upwards movement, and then he settles himself back in his seat. “I do. I know you still have some doubts about me, but I genuinely do want to make this town safer.”

“What do you even have to do with it?” Chris asks. He still sounds like he’s smarting from Scott’s rebuff, but there’s some real interest in the question, too. “You’re not from here.”

“No. No, but—my family and I grew up in a town very similar to this. With a local pack, and a good alpha, and they saved my sister and I and I’ll spare you the details, but ever since I’ve found out about the supernatural, I’ve just wanted to see if I could help it coexist with the rest of the world. I’ve seen some wonderful things,” Deaton says, his voice briefly going low with distant, almost childlike awe. Then he shakes himself again. “And I understand that it carries dangers, too, but I still think getting rid of all of it, good and bad, would be a greater loss.”

“Well, I assume that that’s why we’re trying to just target this thing in particular, instead of razing the entire preserve,” Talia says dryly. She holds Deaton’s gaze for a few seconds, and then sighs and looks over the mess on the coffeetable. “A break for everyone might be good, now that I think about it. You certainly look as if you could use some coffee.”

Deaton blinks, then offers a half-hearted demurral before he gets up, saying that he’ll go start a pot for all of them. When Chris also gets up, Deaton starts and then quickly asks whether Chris can help him clear some of the used mugs and glasses from around the room. It’s a terrible peace offering—for all his enthusiasm, Deaton’s improvisation skills are not improving—but a distracted Chris accepts, probably because that will get him to where he can futilely try and see Scott through the kitchen windows.

And if _that’s_ Scott’s problem, Lydia thinks, she’s going to nail the pair of them with her pointiest, longest heels, because they are absolutely beyond having romantic entanglements take down their work. Stiles and Peter are more blatant about it, but at least they manage to put it aside when it comes to strategy sessions.

“If I’m really honest, I’m not sure it’s worth coming back from the break tonight,” Talia mutters, drawing Lydia’s attention back to her. She’s slouching back in the armchair, her composure slowly melting away to reveal a very tired woman.

Talia should be healed from Carlo’s attack by now, but Lydia has noticed a lingering change in the other woman. She’s less combative, and Lydia doesn’t think it’s simply because she’s learned to hide her anger better, or because she’s accepted that she has to put up with them for the greater good of her pack. No, she genuinely seems to just not be taking offense as often.

And she’s asking after Lydia and Stiles and Scott now, and not as if she’s trying to wrongfoot them. “I know we have to deal with it, but we haven’t seen it since the fight, so it’s sticking in the preserve,” she says. “If you’re having issues, maybe—”

“We’re always having issues,” Lydia says. She had moved her laptop out of the way in case she had to get involved, but she pulls it back onto her legs now. Then sighs as the Internet cord catches around the foot of the couch, and bends down to tug that free. Dependable mainstream wireless Internet can’t come fast enough. “We’ll deal with Scott, so don’t worry about it.”

“You almost make it sound like you’re going to put him down if he doesn’t listen,” Talia says. She’s joking and she’s not, and the not-joking part actually seems to be concern, not irritation. “I was trying to say, it’s the holidays anyway, I don’t think it would hurt to put it on hold for a little bit. And I realize you’re very proud of taking on everything that multiple worlds have thrown at you, but even you need a break once in a while.”

“Well, that’s why we went farther back,” Lydia mutters. She pulls up a forum for local folklore and then suppresses a sigh as the first thing that hits her eye is a misspelling-ridden, all-caps rant about how governments are manipulating people using subliminal messaging in children’s television. Possession is real and only needs a bargain-bin Ouija board and any passing, bored demon, and this is what people think their tax dollars are being wasted on. “So we could have the time to deal with things.”

Talia sucks in her breath, then reconsiders whatever she’d been about to say. Her patience has grown but she still clearly thinks their attitude isn’t merited. “Lydia. Take a break. And if you’re going to make me be snide about it, well, my kids still think I’m going off to die every time I step out of the house. I’d like to give them one Christmas that’s free of death threats.”

It’s on the tip of Lydia’s tongue to say that that would probably be a bigger shock to them than the shadow thing, but even she has limits. So she just presses her lips together and keeps scrolling through the forum posts, looking for anything remotely useful.

“You know, I really don’t think you’re missing anything,” Talia suddenly says. When Lydia looks up, the woman is leaning forward, watching her with an intent gaze. Then Talia gets up from the armchair and begins to tidy up the coffeetable, deliberately glancing up at Lydia every few seconds. “Beacon Hills is strange.”

“Yes, we know. It’s always like that,” Lydia says, just keeping herself from snapping the words. “It’s strange just for being so consistent across timelines.”

“Well, then you should be used to it always taking a while to figure out,” Talia says.

Lydia drops her hands from the keyboard and looks up. “I _should_ , shouldn’t I?”

Talia presses her lips together. Her hands move back from the table too, as if she’s just going to walk away, and then she shakes her head. “I don’t want to argue with you, all right? I just…would appreciate it, if you didn’t think that driving yourself to skin and bones was the way into our good graces.”

“And here I thought that was our best virtue in your eyes,” Lydia says, smiling at Talia.

And Talia smiles back, no hesitation; she might be more relaxed but she’s no less sharp. “You’re even more exasperating than my brother sometimes, I swear. Well, look, I’ve had some time to think, now that we aren’t in imminent danger—”

“We don’t know that,” Lydia says. “That’s why I’m still working.”

Talia smiles first this time, and it’s pure annoyance. “Lydia. We’re werewolves. There’s danger, and then there’s danger. And unless we want to hide from the world, we still have to live our lives around them, and I personally prefer to live. My pack and I do, and if you’re staying, as you keep saying you are, then you’d better learn too.”

Lydia raises her brows. “Are you honestly threatening me?”

“No, I’m just _observing_ that at this rate, you’re going to end up with the diabetes problem, rather than my son,” Talia says. She pauses, then raises her brows right back. “The scent maskers work on you, not the DVDs.”

Lydia silently reminds herself to fix that the next time she and Stiles settle in for a late-night movie, and then—she hears herself. And even inside her own head, it does sound terrible.

“Just take a few days off,” Talia says, sensing the weakness like the predator she is. “And once Christmas is over, we should try going up to the house again. If the monster’s really peculiar to the preserve, the best resources probably are still in my family’s library.”

“We’ve been through this with Peter,” Lydia says irritably. “The house is where it’s been seen the most, and till Stiles can figure out what magic is reliable against it—”

“If we were going to be completely conservative about that, we should all just move out of town,” Talia says. “And honestly, as long as we take Stiles or you along, is it really any different from what we’re doing here, rotating shifts so that a magic-worker is always home?”

“Are you really that eager to get back to the preserve?” Lydia says. “You only just almost died on its border.”

It’s a cheap shot and Talia doesn’t even flinch. She simply levels her gaze on Lydia and uses a steady, calm voice that makes Lydia feel just a little the age difference between them. “Even if it wasn’t dangerous, I still wouldn’t be eager to go back to what, as far as I’m concerned, is _still_ my parents’ house. It wasn’t a happy place for Peter or me. But I’m the pack alpha, Lydia, that’s part of the job. All I can do is just make sure that I’m getting a good enough return on the risks I take.”

“I can understand that,” Lydia says after a moment. “Though where’s the return, if it’s not your house.”

“It’s not our house but it’s still our territory. And love it or hate it, I have responsibilities here. I’d think _you_ would understand that,” Talia says. Her voice is a little edged.

Lydia smiles at her. “Touché.”

Oddly, Talia doesn’t smile back. She sits on the couch for another few seconds, and then she gets up, dusting her hands briskly against her legs as she does. She has to walk by Lydia to leave the room, and as she passes, she reaches over and pushes the top of Lydia’s laptop down—but not completely shut. Just down enough to make her point.

“I’m not your alpha, and I know I wasn’t ever around to be part of your debt before,” Talia says, going towards the stairs. “But you’re growing on me, and if that’s not just my going a little crazy after Carlo, I think it’d be a shame for me to end up burying you out there.”

As she goes up, Deaton walks in from the kitchen, brimming coffeepot in hand. “Are we breaking up for the night?” he asks.

“No,” Lydia says after a moment. It’s a longer moment than she’d like, and she makes a face at herself as she pushes the laptop lid back up. “No, not all of us. You’re welcome to stop if you can’t take it anymore, of course.”

Deaton may not take offense, but he makes a silent point with how he ducks back into the kitchen and then returns with fresh mugs, the coffeepot, and a plate of cookies. Lydia grimaces again upon seeing the cookies, and then just reminds herself that as long as she takes it straight, coffee has practically no calories. And it’s not as if she doesn’t burn off plenty of calories keeping everyone else going when nobody else will. She’ll be fine.

* * *

“Sorry about what I said last night,” Scott says. “I know you weren’t really getting at Dad.”

Stiles slings his arm over Scott’s shoulders and uses his other hand to shove the roll of giftwrap paper across Scott’s chest. “Scott, I was an asshole and a hypocrite, and I wasn’t bringing your dad into it that time but I’ve done it before, and you undeservedly let me off the hook those times. Which I’m sorry for. Also, bro, since we’re on that, talk to me. And do that cool thing where you get the ribbon to curl really pretty with your claws.”

Scott takes the roll, and also the handful of ribbon spools that Stiles lumps into his lap, and then he starts untangling them as Stiles unwraps the arm from him and crawls over to drag the bags of toys and clothes and other gifts over to them. He’s briefly distracted—and amused—to see Stiles carefully separating out a couple items that are obviously for Peter. Then he’s distracted almost to the point of stabbing the giftwrap paper with his claws when Stiles pulls out a portable crossbow kit.

“What?” Stiles says, looking at him. “I don’t know why we couldn’t get the whole ninja werewolves thing off the ground before, but if Chris wants to make my dream come true, I’m okay with spending a couple Franklins on him. Anyway, I thought we all agreed that he’s working through that trauma of his pretty well. So talk.”

Actually, Stiles and Lydia and Talia agreed, and Scott’s done his best to avoid those conversations, even though that makes him feel like, well, he’s sneaking around their backs. Even if nothing’s going on.

“Talk about what?” Scott says. Then he grabs the nearest box and starts to roll out the paper so he can cut it to size. “Because I know what you’re thinking, and there’s nothing to talk about there, so I don’t know what else I’m supposed to say.”

“You’re sounding like me, Scott,” Stiles observes. He’s smiling, but over that his eyes are very sober, and very closely watching Scott. “That’s never a good sign.”

Scott slices out a rectangle of wrapping paper and then reaches for the Scotch tape. “I’m sorry, okay, I just was—I’ve been really tired lately, I guess. Not that that’s an excuse for going off on you, and in front of everybody too, but…”

“Fine, if you’re gonna insist, mutual apologies, but we all go off on each other. That’s not what I’m worried about. I’m worried about the not sleeping thing, not even going out to the roof thing. So yeah, about _that_ ,” Stiles says. “I wasn’t calling you out before because we had other stuff going on, but Scotty, I am literally wrapping a plush talking wolf for Derek. If we don’t have time now to go over your issues with Chris, we’re never going to.”

“You bought that for him as soon as you realized you could hack the voice chip,” Scott points out.

Stiles rolls his eyes and picks up another roll of giftwrap paper. “Scott, we are, for the first time, early enough to intervene with Derek’s personality issues before they’re set in stone, and to hell with the killing Hitler dilemma, all right? This is a little werewolf kid who isn’t even three feet tall.”

And then he holds up the boxed plush and squeezes the Try Me button before Scott can reply. _“Don’t be a sourwolf!_ the plush chirps, wiggling its feet and bobbing its head.

In actual werewolf body language, that sort of movement registers as slightly deranged. Still, Scott can’t help but crack a smile. “When he hits his teens, he’s going to hate you, I hope you realize,” he says.

“Yeah, well, if that happens, then we know we’ve been a success,” Stiles says, his humor fading. He puts the box down and looks at Scott over it for a little while, and then he sighs and just starts cutting and taping.

They each do two gifts each for the kids, and then Stiles starts on the gifts for the women. He’s wrestling with one of those thin cardboard boxes the mall gives you for clothing gifts when Scott puts down the ribbon rosette he’s working on. “Chris wants pack,” Scott says.

Stiles glances up, and then mutters a few curses, magical and nonmagical, as he finally gets the box to not collapse long enough to get the paper fitted around it and taped down. “So you’ve said.”

“Chris wants to be pack with _me_ ,” Scott adds.

“So…you didn’t say, but I kind of assumed,” Stiles says. He’s trying to pass it off as just their usual banter, but he’s looking up at Scott a little too often, and Scott’s known him too long that he didn’t even have to get used to Stiles using scent maskers; he never relied on smell to read the man anyway. “He does sort of follow you around. And ask about you. Like, a lot.”

“So you two are still talking?” Scott says. “Is that why Peter’s so nasty to him?”

Stiles turns the box over in his hands, checking the giftwrap for defects, and then he puts it aside. Then he jabs his finger in Scott’s face. “No changing the subject to the fact that I’m horrifically fond of not-psycho jailbait teen Peter.”

Scott looks at him.

“Okay, fine, I’m—well, we’re dating, obviously, and I swear to God, if Talia doesn’t just corner me and do the shovel talk already, I’m going to corner her because she is deliberately using the suspense against me, and God, they are so much like each other, why did we not guess that when we jumped to here,” Stiles says, and then he gulps an inhale. He sits back and picks up a blouse that he refolds twice before slipping it back into the tissue paper in its box. “So. Yeah. I’m pretty into him. I mean. I think we’re gonna end up seeing what a timeline looks like when I’m the one to fuck up Peter.”

“You’re not going to fuck him up,” Scott says. He reaches over and pushes at Stiles’ shoulder till the man looks at him, and then he gives Stiles’ shoulder a squeeze. Then leans over the man and sticks the finished rosette on Lydia’s gift. “You’re not. And you know it, or else you wouldn’t be—”

“Worried?” Stiles says, sarcastic to cover up exactly that.

“I was going to say, willing to try with him. I mean, after that one. You know,” Scott says, watching the other man.

Stiles goes a little tense, but the twist of his mouth is more wry than bitter. “Yeah. Yeah, well…you know, you asked me about what happens if we want to settle down, and I kind of bit your head off because—it’s us, we don’t know how to settle down. But I guess it hits you in the face and you kind of…end up wanting to try that, for once. But I am getting so, so far ahead of things here, God, I sound like we’re getting married.”

“Well, Talia’s been pretty lowkey but I think that would bring on the shovel talk, if nothing else,” Scott says.

“That’s what I would say,” Stiles says, laughing. He picks up the box with the blouse and sets it on top of the giftwrap paper, and then looks up, no longer amused. “Again, bad sign. Look, I didn’t want to just be a blunt asshole about it, but is Chris harassing you or something?”

“I’m an alpha,” Scott says.

Stiles grimaces. “Bingo. Man, okay, that’s…I’m gonna get it out of the way and just say that if he knew about—”

“He knows about Allison,” Scott says. “I told him about her. And how I used to feel about her.”

For a good minute Stiles just sits and stares at Scott, doing nothing except the occasional shocked blink. And when he finally stirs, he still looks groggy; he almost tries to tear off a piece of ribbon to use as tape before Scott puts his hand out and makes Stiles notice that.

“Um. Okay.” Stiles shakes his head. “I actually thought that he was getting more stable.”

“He is, sort of,” Scott says. He picks up a ribbon spool to keep his hands occupied, and at least not completely waste the time, but just ends up curling and recurling the same strip of ribbon. “He’s trying to move on after what happened with his family.”

“And he’s gonna do that by hitting on a guy who dated his daughter?” Stiles says.

“Well, the Allison I loved wasn’t his daughter, and anyway I—I’m always going to love her, but she’s just…she’s just not why I do this, why I’m here,” Scott says. “She’s not in my life anymore, and I know that, I’m not looking for that. I told you that.”

Stiles makes a noncommittal noise. When Scott looks up at him, he winces and then raises his hand, silently asking if Scott can just give him a second. So Scott does, and Stiles wraps a present and starts on another, while Scott eventually gives up on the ribbon and just works on stuffing gifts into pretty bags with tissue paper. And then Stiles takes a deep breath.

“I remember. And I believed you then, and I believe you now. Honestly, I think you were moving on even before you met Allison who married douc—Jackson,” Stiles says, slowly and carefully. “She just put it in perspective for you. But Scott, then—”

“He’s not his daughter, we both know that, but he’s—they might be from different timelines but you can still see where they’re both coming from,” Scott interrupts. “And it was so hard to get over her, Stiles, and I still don’t know what to do with myself now. You know, this true alpha thing, if it’s all about will, then how come I feel like I don’t even have enough for just being me, let alone being somebody’s alpha?”

“That’s a lot, and you’re mixing up two different things.” Stiles sits back and looks at Scott, and then pushes aside the gifts between them so that he can swing around and sit shoulder-to-shoulder with Scott. “And I’m pretty sure you know that, and I’m just gonna say, Scott, something that always reminds me why we’re friends is how even when you have no idea what you’re doing, you’re still gonna try, and you’re gonna try one-ten percent.”

Scott smiles, but it’s slipping from him even before Stiles puts the arm back around his shoulders. “In that case, then what happens when I’m just—maybe I’m just too tired to try?”

Stiles is silent for a little while. Long enough for Scott to look over, but Stiles isn’t upset or angry, he’s just working through something, and it’s serious and complex enough that he’s pushing aside his usual jokes to focus. “Well, then maybe…maybe just sit, and breathe a little, and see what comes up to you. I mean, you’re not the only one who’s wondered how long we can keep it up. And we gotta be idiots if we don’t admit we all kind of have self-destructive streaks, but…I think if we really wanted to die, we would’ve let that happen by now. So I think, weird as it is, we all still are hoping we’ll end up happy.”

“Yeah,” Scott says. He looks absently over the things around them—toys and clothes, tape and ribbon scraps and shiny colorful giftwrap—and then he looks at that all again. It’s not the first holiday they’ve celebrated in a new timeline, and it’s not even the first holiday they’ve celebrated with people from that timeline, but…it does feel a little different.

And that’s funny, Scott thinks. After time-traveling so much, you’d think change would be the least scariest thing for them. But going from constant change to something a little slower, even if it’s just for a few days, that’s probably the biggest change they’ve had in a while.

“Yeah,” he says again. “Yeah. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Stiles says. He smiles, then theatrically wipes his hand over his brow. “Because Scotty, you can always just tell Chris no means no, and if he doesn’t listen, I’ll handle it because we seriously do not have the time for it. We gotta deal with Lyds.”

Scott sucks in his breath. “Yeah, I noticed. Even _Talia’s_ noticed.”

“Well, if the Versace here doesn’t do it, maybe we should switch places and I stay home and she goes to the preserve and just scares out that smoke-baby whatever,” Stiles says. He tilts his head, then shakes it. “No, I know, bad idea. For all we know it’ll get attached to her and she’ll go all _Game of Thrones_ and…damn it, Scott, you still haven’t watched those?”

“They aren’t coming out for another decade or something,” Scott says. “I thought we said no more accidentally preempting pop culture.”

“There’s an exception to every rule, and…whatever, I’ll just schedule a movie night. Might be a good time to corner Lyds too, even she can’t avoid me when Derek’s anchoring her lap,” Stiles says, getting up. He hisses a little as his joints pop, and then swerves around Scott and heads for the stairs. “I’m gonna check and see how much longer the kids will be asleep. You want a water or anything?”

“You’re not letting Derek watch that show, he’s way too young,” Scott says. “Talia and Peter will kill you, and anyway, that’ll reverse the good of the plushie wolf.”

Stiles just laughs and flaps his hand over his shoulder, going up the basement stairs. Shaking his head, and making a note to himself to move those DVDs to one of the lockboxes, Scott goes back to wrapping gifts.

He’s through all of them and cleaning up the scraps when he hears somebody coming towards the stairs. They stop at the door and knock, and he smells Chris a second before he hears the man’s voice. “Dinner duty,” Chris says.

“Be up in a second, just picking up some things,” Scott calls up.

Chris doesn’t leave. He stands by the door for a couple seconds, then carefully swings it open and slips down the steps. Watches Scott for a few more seconds. “You need any help?”

Not really, there’s only a few ribbon spools left on the ground, but Scott hesitates and then nods towards those. Chris blinks, surprised, and then hurriedly leans over and grabs up the spools. Then he walks with Scott over to the corner of the basement where they’re hiding most of the gifts.

“Look, I was thinking,” Chris says abruptly. “People are noticing, and it’s getting in the way of trying to solve the smoke-monster problem. So we should just—we should sit down and get it over with.”

“You mean talk about it?” Scott says.

Chris starts to reply, his voice roughening with frustration, and then he stops himself. He presses his lips together and just holds out the spools for Scott to put away.

“I just—I just want to have a chance to make a case for it,” Chris finally mutters. “We have a little breathing room, and—and I’m not just coming down from the adrenaline anymore. Just let me—”

“Okay,” Scott says. He puts the last spool into the box and sticks the lid on, and then looks up at a poleaxed Chris. “Okay, yeah, that’s a good idea. Because honestly, you need a chance to see what you’d be getting into, too.”

“We share a room,” Chris says after a second.

“Not really, and you know that,” Scott says. He stands back, absently rubbing his hands against his hips, and then can’t help a laugh under his breath. “It might not look too bad when you’re just getting me when I’m running away all the time, but…anyway, I do want to be fair. So you should get a better look, and see if you really want to figure out what’s next with me.”

Chris keeps staring at him, a little as if Scott is a completely alien thing. And then he smiles. Almost everything he does is still tinged with bitterness and his smile isn’t any different, and there’s a lot of disbelief, too, but besides that, there’s a little seed of something lighter. “You think I _haven’t_ seen you,” he says. “Well, fine. If it’ll make you feel better.”

“It would, actually,” Scott says.

The look in Chris’ eyes changes slightly, going strangely…he makes a slight shift to the side and it’s only after he moves back that Scott registers it as an aborted flanking movement, like they’re both facing up to an enemy. “Then I want to,” he says, more quietly, with far less challenge. “When?”

“I…I guess maybe something on Christmas?” Scott says, a little off-guard, just saying whatever he thinks of first. “I mean, any time we’re free, I don’t mind, but I think patrols are going to keep us busy till then.”

A little flicker of impatience rises in Chris’ face, then vanishes as nods. “All right, I’ll catch you,” he says.

Then he turns and goes upstairs, without looking back or waiting. Scott stares at his back, then glances at the shelves. Everything’s in order, but Scott looks at them a little longer before he finally goes up himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Saaamaaa Ritual is from William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki stories (which are weird occult-detective stories that mix with the Cthulhu mythos).


	3. Chapter 3

Peter might get embarrassingly excited about being able to get back into his house again, when he hears about it.

He still isn’t much interested in going back to live there, but all his things are still in the place. And they can buy him new clothes, and Stiles can share his books and future-tech laptop, and Laura and Derek and Cora can pile on Peter till he smells pack wherever he goes, but there still are a couple things he misses.

“Don’t laugh,” he says, making a half-hearted attempt to be cross as Stiles snickers at him. “Don’t, all right? Your first kill is important, you should know that, hanging around werewolves. Even if it’s—”

“I’m not laughing at _you_ ,” Stiles says, kicking his feet up onto the coffeetable. He stretches out as Peter makes a face at him, and then suddenly drops his arm around Peter’s waist.

And that’s such a lame, telegraphed move…but it works. Peter gets hooked half-onto Stiles’ lap before he knows it, and he’s barely managed a huff for appearances’ sake when Stiles reaches around and grabs his thigh, and swivels him so they’re half-facing each other.

“I’m laughing at little five-year-old you,” Stiles says, grinning up at him. And reaches up and rubs his thumb along Peter’s jaw, leaving a lingering streak of warmth that seems to get hotter after the thumb moves on. “So proud of himself, showing his big sister what he did, and then she’s panicking because she was supposed to be watching the class pet.”

Peter pokes a finger into Stiles’ chest. “We substituted another mouse and if anything, it was an improvement on the old one. It ran around a lot more.”

Stiles laughs softly, rubbing his thumb down Peter’s jawline again, and Peter can’t help but turn into it. He’s a little awkwardly twisted and he gives up and drags his leg around so that he’s straddling the man, who promptly drops a hand to Peter’s ass. And then smirks as Peter stifles a noise that’s annoyingly close to a squeak— _not_ because Peter’s a prude or anything like that. It’s just…it’s like Stiles just reaches right into Peter and turns on a tap that sends heat flushing all through Peter’s body, when Stiles does that, and that feels so good it’s a little terrifying. Peter’s never reacted like that to somebody, never lost hold of himself that quickly or that easily.

Well, he’ll get used to it, he tells himself, and pointedly sits back so he traps Stiles’ hand between his buttock and Stiles’ thigh. “It was Talia’s idea to skin it and frame the fur,” he mutters. “So really, it’s her fault.”

“I like her style, I gotta say,” Stiles says. “Turn a negative into a big, flaming, in-your-face boast.”

“That’s not just her, that’s the family style,” Peter says, a little irked.

Stiles tilts his head, then suddenly hikes up his legs, tipping Peter forward. Peter catches himself with a hand against the couch back and another on Stiles’ chest, but by then Stiles has already reached up and curled his hand around Peter’s nape and pulled Peter the rest of the way for a kiss. And God, but Peter can’t get enough of making out with him.

He slips a little, he gets so dizzy with the taste of the man, and then he has to move his hands to Stiles’ shoulders to keep from slipping more. Even though he’s sitting on Stiles, and that shouldn’t even be physically possible, but he just feels like he’s teetering. And Stiles doesn’t even give him a second, just uses his hand to angle Peter’s head as Peter shifts around, his thumb now rubbing lopsided circles along Peter’s hairline, starting up shivers that run all the way down Peter’s back.

They keep finding new ways to make kissing even better, just the way that their mouths fit together, how Stiles slides his hands over Peter and then Stiles’ fingers brush up under Peter’s shirt, just above the waistband of Peter’s jeans, and Peter shivers so hard that he breaks apart their mouths. He hears an urgent, begging whine, and then realizes that _he’s_ the one making it.

“You’re ridiculous,” Stiles says. And when Peter opens his mouth to protest, the man tips Peter with his legs again, then reaches up with both hands to cradle Peter’s face. Staring up at him with hungry, hungry eyes, the kind that should make Peter run as fast as he can in the other direction, because he’s never been about giving up that much.

But it’s Stiles, and Peter not only stays, he fights a little against Stiles’ hands, trying to get back to kissing. Stiles holds him back, then makes a low, affectionate noise, about as close as a human can get to a werewolf purr, long fingers stroking up the sides of Peter’s _throat_ and Peter can’t help it, he whines again, and Stiles just—just runs his thumbs under Peter’s chin and Peter tilts that up for Stiles, doesn’t even think twice about it. It just feels right.

“Ridiculous,” Stiles says again, a lot rougher, as he pulls Peter’s face down towards him. But he doesn’t kiss Peter—he leans in and puts his mouth almost to Peter’s Adam’s apple, and then just breathes on that, hot and wet and Peter trembles so much he’s glad he’s being held up and doesn’t have to worry about that. “So ridiculously adorable, why are you—you look like you have goddamn bubblegum for lips, honestly.”

Peter fights past his instincts to make an annoyed noise. “I hate bubblegum.”

“Well, lucky for you, I like it,” Stiles says, just before kissing Peter again. And again.

And again, till Peter surfaces for a much-needed breath and somehow finds himself with his hands fisted in Stiles’ shirt. He doesn’t even remember doing—he tightens his grip, making embarrassing tiny noises as Stiles’ fingers slide down his throat till they’re playing with the collar of his shirt, callused fingertips roughing up the sensitive spots in the hollows of his collarbone, just the top of his breastbone.

Peter makes himself move his hands, not wanting to be completely useless, and he manages to get them down to Stiles’ stomach with a vague idea about pulling up the man’s shirt, except their bodies shift and his one hand slips off and one knuckle glances along the button of Stiles’ fly and under that the denim is pushing—

Stiles tips them to the side and over, just as Peter’s really registering what he’s just flirted with, and then Peter’s on his back under the other man and God, Stiles is going to town on his mouth. He can’t even think about trying to do anything, can barely even do enough to clench his hands over the edge of the seat cushion and the top of the couch. And Stiles grabs his ass again and levers Peter up by it and suddenly they’re pressed together belly to belly and Peter can feel his _own_ cock half-mast against Stiles’ stomach and Stiles’ other hand is rumpling Peter’s shirt, squeezing it up and Stiles’ fingers catch something that hurts and then _heats_ , like a bolt of lightning through Peter.

Moaning, Peter rocks helplessly up as Stiles lifts half-off him, glances him over, and then laughs and bends to—to _kiss_ the nipple he accidentally pinched, right through Peter’s shirt, and—

“Peter! Peter!” Laura screams.

Stiles jerks his head up, already looking over, and then he twists back. He looks at Peter, winces, and hastily yanks and pats and pushes at Peter’s clothes in an ungraceful flurry. “Laura?”

“It’s naptime!” Peter snaps, staring at the ceiling past Stiles’ head. “Why aren’t you in bed?”

“Peter!” Derek shouts.

That—Peter’s still annoyed, but that’s a bad sign. Derek isn’t a shouter, and even when he’s really frightened, he tends to keep his mouth shut till he can find somebody.

Peter pulls himself up into a sitting position. Stiles is already off the couch, and is giving himself a quick straightening out as he makes his way to the stairs. “Derek? Laura? What is it, is Cora—”

“It’s Chris!” Laura shouts. “He hurt himself!”

Stiles pauses halfway up the stairs and frowns while the house’s wards light up around him, and then he hurries up the rest of the way. At that point Peter’s right behind him, powered by sheer annoyance at the…and Talia thought Argent was getting tolerable. Hah.

When they get upstairs, Derek and Laura are standing in the middle of the hall, looking into Scott and Chris’ bedroom. The door is open, but before Peter can look in, Chris stumbles out, cradling his arm.

“That _thing_ was in the backyard,” Chris says, seeing them. Then he stops and looks at them.

“Breathe through your mouth, would you,” Peter mutters. “What do you mean, it was in the—”

Stiles is already in the bedroom, and he’s checking the wards around the window, which is closed, when Peter looks in. “Nothing’s gone off that I can see from here.”

“Yeah, I didn’t see anything light up either,” Chris says. “But I tried to hit the alarm rune when I saw it, and this happened.”

He takes his hand off his arm and lets them see the slowly-fading burn mark on it. Stiles gives the backyard a last glance, then comes over and takes Chris’ arm by the wrist and elbow, holding it up and frowning at it. Chris starts to say something, then stops himself and just looks very amused as Peter hustles over to Stiles’ side.

“You’re sure you saw it?” Peter says.

“It’s broad daylight, what else would I be seeing?” Chris says. Then he presses his lips together for a few seconds, obviously cutting back on the temper. “I was going to the bathroom and your bedroom door was open and Laura and Derek were whimpering, so I—”

“What?” Peter says sharply. 

He goes back into the hall, but the kids aren’t there. Peter’s heart jumps into his throat before he hears their heartbeats and realizes they’ve just moved back to the bedroom. 

When he goes in there, Laura runs over to him and hugs his leg so hard that he nearly falls over her, gritting his teeth as his knee joint groans. Then she lets go, just as fast, and runs back to the bed where Cora is blinking sleepily. “I didn’t let him get her,” she says.

“Did it get in the house?” Peter says.

“No, but he was looking in the window again,” Laura says.

Derek nods. He walks up to Peter, who assumes the boy wants reassurance and who squats down. But when Peter reaches for Derek, Derek just stands where he is, looking solemnly at Peter.

“Mom doesn’t like it when we say it,” he whispers. “But you won’t get mad, right?”

“Mad about what?” Peter says.

And then Derek suddenly runs forward. He’s on Peter before Peter can brace himself, and so Peter grabs at the floor and not at his nephew, who gets halfway to strangling Peter before he lightens up. Even then, Peter can feel Derek’s tiny claws pricking through his shirt as Derek hangs from his neck.

“Dad,” Derek says. “Dad was here again.”

* * *

Chris studies the photo in his hands for a few more minutes, but when he finally hands it back to Talia, his expression alone tells her that his answer hasn’t changed.

“Didn’t look like him,” Chris says. “Didn’t look like anybody, honestly, any of the times I’ve seen it. It barely looks like it has a body.”

“I thought…” Peter starts, his voice uncharacteristically faltering. Then he humps his shoulders and pushes up his chin, and looks Talia in the eye. “During the fight, when I saw it, I thought…I thought it was getting a face for a second. But it still didn’t look like anybody I recognized.”

Talia nods curtly. Not because she doesn’t believe her brother, or because she’s frustrated with him for not being able to provide any more information. But she just feels—she feels so helpless. Useless. She’d just started to feel as if they had a handle on things, shaky as it was, and that maybe she’d be able to give her children a little bit of peace. A decent Christmas, at least. Laura’s old enough to remember the first couple after Talia left her parents’ house, when things between Talia and Mark were at their best, but Derek probably can’t, and Cora certainly has never had a Christmas where Talia wasn’t fighting with someone.

“Well, this might actually be helpful,” Stiles says.

“Helpful?” Talia barks.

“Yeah, okay, because it gives off emotions and now it looks like it can pick up on our fears, so we can look into that,” Stiles says calmly, the both of them ignoring how Peter is tensing up. “Stuff like nightmare curses, mara demons, night hags. And those are actually all pretty easy to deal with once you figure out it’s one of them.”

Talia sags a little, and now Peter’s tensing because of her. “So you don’t think—you don’t think they’re seeing some kind of ghost?”

“Of…of your ex?” Stiles says, blinking. “You said you took care of him.”

“Because I did,” Talia says. She sounds strained and she barely stops herself from growling simply to cover that up. “I killed him, and made sure of it, too. Cut off his head, covered both parts with wolfsbane, buried them separately. I don’t know how deader you can make a werewolf.”

Stiles and Lydia look at each other, while Scott shifts back from where he’s leaning against the doorway, half-in the conversation and half-watching the kids. He’s holding a half-asleep Cora, while Derek and Laura are supposed to be watching TV in the living room but who are far too quiet to be really paying attention. The privacy wards should be keeping them from overhearing what Talia’s saying about their father, but those don’t stop two small shadows from occasionally drifting into view on the hallway floor behind Scott.

It twists up Talia’s stomach into vicious knots to just think about Derek and Laura right now. Werewolves are born into a difficult, ever-threatening world, but her children have seen too much of its bad sides, too early. They might still play like any other kid, but it shows in how they go silent whenever Talia or Peter leave the house, and how every time Talia’s put the kids to bed since her fight with Carlo, she’s overheard Laura telling Derek and Cora that Laura will be there when they wake up, no matter what.

“What is it?” Peter’s exasperated voice makes Talia start, and when she redirects her attention to her brother, she’s just in time to catch him flicking a pen at Stiles. “You’re doing that look again, when it’s something other versions did. Just spit it out already.”

“It’s not relevant,” Lydia says curtly.

Talia hates to admit it, but the other woman’s prickliness is starting to be a welcome distraction. “It might be informative anyway.”

“It’s just, we _have_ had werewolves come back from the dead,” Stiles says slowly. “But the bodies were… in bad shape, but not actually dismembered, and there were other circumstances—”

“You didn’t know they could?” Talia and Peter and Chris all say at the same time.

Then Chris straightens up. He flicks a look that takes in Talia and about half of Peter, who snorts and looks away, and then he turns back to the others. “The whole thing about cutting them in half, it’s not…it didn’t start out as just hunters being sadistic,” he says. “We’ve got less obvious ways to handle it now, but you still have to treat the body afterward since werewolves who die can still take on other forms—this is pretty standard in a lot of Eastern European folklore, I can’t believe you haven’t heard of the werewolf-vampire connection.”

“We’ve heard of it, it’s just before, in other timelines, in the periods we jumped into, werewolves either didn’t know their own lore or they had this annoying habit of fucking assuming they’d take care of it before it came up and then dying before they could pass information on,” Stiles snaps. “Or just being straight-up smug liars.”

Peter snorts again, but this time he’s looking at Stiles. He’s being sarcastic but his scent is an odd mix of affection, nerves, and invitation, without any of the resentment that had tinged his conversations with Stiles before. “I’m ninety-nine percent sure I know which category the other me fell into, just by your phrasing.”

“Stop flirting during strategy,” Lydia says.

Stiles already has his mouth open to reply to Peter and he lets it hang, staring at her, while Peter flushes up and sidles slightly behind Talia’s chair, then catches himself and jerks back to where he was and glares at Lydia.

“The point is, I think we can rule that out based on our past experiences, and you sound as if you’re doing the same,” Lydia goes on.

“I think so,” Talia says slowly. “Well, as far as _I_ know our lore. I don’t know why the werewolves you spoke to wouldn’t have known this, but we all learn this as part of learning about vendettas. There’s no point in settling a dispute and then having it come back to literally haunt you. I did everything I needed to so Mark wouldn’t come back, period.”

“Okay. Okay, so we won’t waste any time looking into it, we’ll check out the other leads instead,” Stiles says. He pauses, fidgeting with his shirt-cuff. “Also, I know you’re kind of compulsively close-mouthed about your family, but since we’re on curses—”

Peter starts to answer, glances at Talia, and then briefly widens his eyes in surprise when she just nods. Then he gives his head a slight shake, looking back at Stiles. “If it’s any of the remaining family, which we don’t think it is, they’re hiring somebody to do it. Da-our father, he was very against werewolves doing anything but really basic magic. That wasn’t always the case, I know older generations didn’t just use Emissaries all the time, but for the current family, he came down very hard on it. I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who was stubborn enough to keep at it, anyway.”

“Though it’s a good point,” Talia says. “We should talk about having Deaton go out again and spread the word. Between Carlo and Gerard, that should cow the rest of them into at least considering a reconciliation.”

This time Stiles and Lydia look surprised. Lydia almost asks something, but she stops because Peter’s just a little too eager to enjoy the turnabout and lets a satisfied noise slip from him. “We don’t _just_ wait for you to bring us the obvious idea,” he says. “And we still don’t want a druid, but we’ll accept a messenger with no sense of personal danger.”

“Yeah, yeah, you were born with puppet strings in your wee little paws,” Stiles drawls. It’s the same kind of comment he would’ve made before, as far as Talia can tell, but she’ll credit the man with a distinct change in tone, dropping the cynicism for a…honestly, a blatantly teasing tone.

Peter flushes again, his surprise undercutting his smugness. Then he blinks hard and jerks around, his brows rising as Talia gets to her feet.

“Well, we won’t get the research done by talking about it,” Talia says. “I need to go see to my kids, and—”

“Yeah, already on it, I’ve got some new queries out to our contacts already,” Stiles says, reaching for his laptop.

“—then we’ll have to move up that trip to our house,” Talia adds. “I insist on that. I want this settled before Christmas and now we know the thing isn’t just staying in the preserve. We can’t afford to not check what my family’s collected over the years.”

Stiles presses his lips together, but he’s already nodding. Then he frowns and looks up—not at Peter, for once, but at Scott, who signals him to look at Lydia. “We discussed this,” Lydia starts.

“We did, and I think the risks are understood, and now I’m making an informed decision,” Talia tells her. “And if you won’t do it, I’ll go ask Deaton.”

“Hey,” Stiles says, raising his hands to show his palms, his eyes sliding with uncharacteristic nervousness to Lydia, then snapping back to Talia. “Let’s not be jerks about this. We’re sending Deaton off on another PR tour, that’s great, he’s shown he’s good at that, and I am totally happy to take a trip into the preserve with you when we have no idea what we’re doing. That’s my sweet spot, my jam, I am all over that.”

“I’ll go too,” Chris says. “Nothing new to me either.”

Scott looks worried, but he nods at Talia. “I don’t know whether you’d rather have me at the house, but I’m open.”

“Good,” Talia says. She’s looking at Lydia, who has swallowed whatever else she’d been about to say, and who looks very much as if it is cutting out of her anyway, and that she hopes it’ll jump straight to Talia and do the same.

But Lydia is silent behind the baleful look, and after a moment, Talia withdraws. She takes Cora from Scott’s arms and then steps into the living room.

Peter’s at her heels, practically dripping with curiosity, and then he angles in front of her to intercept her two eldest children. He mostly gets Laura, who’s babbling too-excitedly about a new trick Stiles showed her for setting off the alarm wards, but Derek ducks his outstretched hand and then wraps around Talia’s leg, hugging it so tightly that she can see his little shirt straining across his back. Derek looks up at Talia with big, solemn eyes and doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t have to.

She’d meant to take them upstairs where they could close the door, but Talia regretfully abandons that plan and just limps over to the nearest ottoman, where she sits down and lets Derek climb up to…God, he’s scenting her, rubbing his cheek over her neck even though they were in adjoining rooms.

“So,” Peter mutters, coming over with Laura in his arms. “We really are sharing now.”

“We’re relying on them, I think we’d best stop being blind to that,” Talia mutters back. She knows the privacy wards are only one-way and the others can still hear them, even if it sounds like Stiles is now in an animated, if slightly tense, discussion with Lydia about mara demons. “And they’re relying on us, even if they won’t admit it.”

Peter hums because he’s confused and desperately trying to pretend he isn’t. “Laura, if you hit me in the face with Basil’s ears one more time,” he says, as Laura hastily shoves her toy behind her back. “Well, they’re not all in denial.”

“I’m still having that talk with Stiles, I haven’t forgotten,” Talia says under her breath. “Especially if he’s going to smell like that every time you don’t call him on still bringing up people who aren’t you at all.”

“Talia, he’s just—look, him and me, we worked that one out, and I’m not offended so stop being offended for me,” Peter says crossly. “What I think is more important is—”

Scott and Chris’ voices enter the hall and Peter stops. The other two walk across the living room entrance and then go up the stairs, quietly talking about how Chris’ arm is—perfectly healed, he’s a werewolf—and then Talia nudges her brother with her shoulder.

“They’re all very experienced and very skilled, and they have all that time-travel knowledge, but that doesn’t mean they see everything,” she says quietly. “Not even Stiles, though I’ll admit he’s probably the least self-blind. They didn’t expect Carlo at all.”

“Because he didn’t know about him, because—” halfway through Peter’s spirited defense suddenly dies to awed comprehension as he catches onto Talia’s line of thought “—we’re different from what they’ve seen, they don’t know our family here, and they didn’t ask, didn’t even think about it, I bet. And we didn’t tell them.”

“I don’t know about you, or certain other people in this house, but I’m not blaming anyone for that,” Talia says. She senses her brother’s disbelief and smiles wryly, nudging his shoulder again with her own. “Really. We didn’t trust them yet, or even understand where they were coming from. And…and they’re just so caught up in us, you know. The Hales they have known. Even if they know we’re not the same—it’s like they don’t even know how to look away now. So they miss things like that.”

Peter makes a low, acknowledging noise, his expression growing somber. He nods, and then grunts as Laura abruptly abandons him for Talia.

Laura’s a little rough, her toy rabbit bumping up against Cora’s back hard enough to wake her, and Talia grabs both daughters, then firmly sits Laura down on her thigh. Thankfully, Cora only blinks sleepily before putting her head back on Talia’s shoulder, but poor Derek has been pushed completely out of the way. Though he takes refuge on Peter’s lap, and puts his arms up to circle Peter’s neck when Peter automatically puts up a hand to steady him.

“Mom,” Laura says, suddenly serious. “Mom. I know what you keep saying, but is Dad really gone?”

“He is,” Talia says, suppressing her wince. “He is, and whatever you saw, it’s not him. It isn’t, Laura, so you did the right thing getting Chris. And you always do that, all right? You get one of us and you tell us, and we’ll chase it away.”

Laura nods but she’s trembling a little. “I don’t want to see him again, Mom. He scares me, and he doesn’t like Derek or Cora either. Even if it’s not Dad, can’t you make it go? For good?”

“We’re going to, Laura,” Talia says. “We will. I promise.”

“Okay. Just—just because I’m trying to be a big girl now but it’s—it’s—I didn’t like it when you and Dad ran after each other before, and I thought when he left it’d stop,” Laura says. She looks up at Talia for another second, then bumps her head against the side of Talia’s jaw before climbing off Talia’s lap. “Peter said if we were good while you talked in the kitchen, he’d give _both_ of us pudding, not just Derek.”

“I don’t like pudding now,” Derek mutters. “I want celery.”

Peter and Talia look at Derek too, but Laura does that and makes a disgusted face. “Ewww. Scott’s nice but I don’t like his snacktimes anymore.”

“You don’t eat it, stupid, you stick it on your fangs and make ‘em bigger,” Derek says, making a face back at her. Then he suddenly jumps off Peter’s lap and scrambles up onto the couch, and in the blink of an eye, he and Laura are both there, quarreling over who gets the good pillow.

“Sometimes I miss having the attention span of a mayfly, I admit,” Peter says, watching them.

Talia snorts, but her amusement is already drying up. Even when her children seem happy, it doesn’t comfort her now. It just makes it worse when she thinks about how likely they are to end up being terrified again. “You know they don’t really forget. Just look at us—look at Scott or Stiles or Lydia, for that matter. I don’t think they mean to give off this impression, but I don’t think I ever want to time-travel now. It’s been so rough on them…I wonder if they ever wish they didn’t have all these alternate versions floating around in their heads.”

Peter looks sharply at her, then down at his hands. Then back up. “If you’re—please tell me you’re not going where I think you are. Because—”

“Oh, I’m just wondering, I wasn’t going to be like Dad, and just assume—” Talia starts.

“Because he told me if I didn’t shut up about you, he’d just take those memories,” Peter abruptly says. His eyes go to his lap again and his shoulders pull down and slightly towards each other. “I wasn’t even—I wasn’t even questioning him, I just said I missed you, and he…if you wondered why I stopped trying to reach you, that was it.”

He stops there. Just as well, because for a second Talia simply is—pure, cold rage. And if anyone ever wondered why werewolves are so obsessed with vendettas, well, she could explain that to them quite simply. It’s because they need something to match up to that depth of feeling.

“I know…it’s not great to remember things like that,” Peter says, very quietly. His head lifts just enough for him to look at Derek and Laura on the couch. “But I just…I’d rather have all of our past still in my head, and have all the problems with it, than end up not knowing what I’ve lost, and I think Stiles and Lydia, at least, would agree. And—and anyway, I think you and me, we still turned out all right.”

“I know,” Talia says, after a long pause to compose herself. And even then, she sounds shaky enough that Derek looks up and over at them. She makes herself smile at him and he goes back to playing with Laura, and as soon as he does, she has to let that smile go before her jaw breaks. “I know. And…you’re right, and thank you for reminding me, Peter.”

“Well, I think Lydia’s mad enough at you,” Peter says. He’s trying a little too hard to jump back to his usual needling of her, and he only lets out a half-hearted protest when she reaches over and curls her arm around him. “Just trying to save you a fight I really, really don’t think we need, or that you’ll win.”

“No, you’re right about that too,” Talia sighs. “We’ve got other problems right now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Per canon, it looks like only head-on photos have the strobe eye issue. Lydia sees a side-view photo of teenage Peter in the trophy case in season two and he's completely visible in that.
> 
> The show has multiple moments where born, experienced werewolves are told things that they should already know, particularly if said werewolf is Derek. It's almost certainly sloppy writing on the show's part (lazy way to convey exposition to the audience), but I suppose you can also posit that, as the children of a very strong alpha, Derek, Laura and Cora were very sheltered, and therefore ignorant, as werewolves go. And then the fire happened and all the people who would've taught them were dead and/or in comas, so they didn't have a chance to have information passed down to them (though why they couldn't have picked it up from other werewolves in the intervening time is still a stretch).
> 
> Anyway, Scott and Stiles and Lydia are used to dealing with werewolves who actually know very little about their own culture. Talia and Peter are not that, and Chris knows stuff from being a hunter.
> 
> The werewolf-vampire link comes from real folklore. In certain regions of Eastern Europe, werewolves and vampires and witches actually operate more like various stages in an evil person's life, rather than as distinct monsters. So when you're alive, you are a witch (who may have werewolf-shifting abilities), and when you die, you have an elevated chance of becoming a vampire (no vamp bite necessary).
> 
> If it wasn't obvious, I dislike very much how the show just blows off the implications of altering people's memories to "protect" them.


	4. Chapter 4

Even before he’d turned, Chris hadn’t spent a lot of time around small children. He doesn’t think that his younger sister really counted; as an Argent daughter, Kate had been raised behind the tightest protections possible till she’d been old enough to handle a gun and a knife, and after that, she’d spent every waking moment trying to push the boundaries of the family Code. All in all, it wasn’t much of an environment for playtime.

And in their line of work, children honestly don’t come up much, unless they’re victims. Most types of supernatural creatures are loners who don’t want the burden of a dependent. Werewolves are an exception, but even then, they keep their children out of sight. The younger alphas generally don’t have the patience anyway; they just build up quick with bites. 

So Chris has to admit, he has no idea what to do with a child with a soiled diaper.

“You forgot the tabs,” Laura says, eyeing him suspiciously. “It’s gonna slip off and Cora’s gonna stain the bed again, and Mom’s gonna be mad at you.”

“What?” Scott says, looking up from where he’s bagging up Cora’s old diaper. He glances over the changing table, then passes the plastic bag to Chris and efficiently rearranges the diaper.

Chris grimaces, and then has to stifle a slight cough as the smell of at least three soiled diapers hits his nose. He’s handled a lot of messes as a hunter, but the change just—the enhanced senses take a lot more adjustment than he expected. Sure, it’s a cliché but he really does have a different view of new-bittens now. Mostly, he understands better why so many of them just seem to completely lose their minds, no matter what kind of person they’d been before the bite. It’s just—a lot.

“If it’s too gross for you, Deaton could use somebody to clean out the cages at the clinic,” Peter says, poking his head into the room. He’s not being sympathetic. “That should be more what you’re used to, right?”

Scott looks up, frowning, his hand straying off Cora as if he’s going to motion Chris back. He starts to say something, and Peter’s obviously got more where that comment came from, but before either of them can get to it, Derek interrupts by jumping up and latching onto Peter’s leg.

“Godda—Derek, God, _what_?” Peter yelps, half-falling against the jamb. He scrabbles at the wood, then gets a handhold and pushes himself back straight as he looks down at the boy. “I swear, sometimes I think you’re turning into a were-koala—”

“Don’t go,” Derek says mournfully. “You said you’d stay, even when Mom doesn’t.”

The thing about small children, Chris thinks, watching as Peter’s annoyance melts into an awkward wince and a hand hovering over Derek’s head, is that they’re a lot sharper than adults want to admit. Derek and Laura get kept out of all the strategy talks, but they seem to have a sixth sense for when their mother or uncle is heading out of the house. Peter had been up just a couple minutes ago, dropping off a fresh bag of disposable diapers, but Derek and Laura had barely looked up from their game of wolves and deer.

“We’re both staying,” Peter says after a second. He’s still irritated, and he doesn’t give Derek that pat on the head, but he also doesn’t really pry at the boy except to jiggle his leg a little. “Stop worrying so much, Derek, I’m just going with Stiles to get us a tree.”

Derek blinks, then lets go of Peter’s leg and steps back, just as Laura comes up to stand beside him. They both look up at Peter with a kind of pure, awed excitement that makes Chris feel like…like Jesus, maybe he knows more about bullet calibers than kids.

“A tree?” Laura says. “A real one?”

“With actual needles that you will not eat, Derek, or they will poke holes in your gut and you’ll die because you have a Swiss cheese stomach,” Peter says, jabbing his finger at Derek’s nose.

Scott frowns again. “Should you really—”

Derek snorts and grabs Peter’s finger, and pushes it down to look up at his uncle. “A tree?” he says, and then he and Laura start hopping in place, their hands waving in the air. “A tree! We’re gonna get a tree!”

“And as much holly and ivy and laurel and yew and whatever other anti-evil plants the florists around here have,” Peter mutters under his breath, though he’s not so cynical that he can avoid a little softening around his eyes. “So I’m going now, and you watch Chris and Scott and make sure they don’t mess up Cora.”

Laura and Derek nod. They stop hopping, and as Peter turns to go, Derek makes a tiny movement towards Peter’s leg. Peter pauses, his face teetering between exasperation and worry, but Derek doesn’t go any further. Actually, after a second, Derek abruptly steps back and grabs onto Laura’s sleeve. They both look up at Peter, who hesitates a little longer, then walks away, grumbling to himself about just a stupid shopping trip.

“You two want to come back, and see if Cora’s done up right?” Scott calls.

Derek glances over, then slowly crosses the room to stand by the changing table. Laura snorts and waits till Scott’s lifted Cora off the table, and then she trails after him, chattering about what he should and shouldn’t do as he sets Cora back in the playpen in the corner.

All three children pretty much ignore Chris, who should feel more comfortable that way, considering whose children they are and how much potential trouble that cuts off. He’s only helping with the babysitting in the first place because after the sighting in the backyard, Talia wants at least two of them with the kids at all times. And Chris is only up as a matter of sheer numbers: they have too many supply runs to make, leading up to raiding the Hales’ house in the woods, and Chris wasn’t going to be trusted with something like that anyway.

“You want to come over too?” Scott says, looking over at Chris.

Scott is…is hard to read. And Chris hasn’t been around that long, but he already knows most people won’t agree with him because of how Scott doesn’t use half the leverage his werewolf abilities give him, even before getting to his alpha status. He always smells exactly like he’s feeling, and he doesn’t seem to bother with the heartbeat- and other masking tricks that Stiles and Lydia use. But in Chris’ opinion, that just makes him more confusing, because then it’s clear that when he suddenly shifts into concern or friendliness, it’s genuine.

“Do I need to?” Chris finally says.

“Why, you scared of us?” Laura says, putting her hands on her hips.

Chris shrugs. Laura narrows her eyes, and then suddenly flashes red eyes and miniscule fangs at Chris. She’s an alpha and so he does feel that instinctive prickle of alarm, but it’s so muted that he doesn’t have to notice it if he doesn’t want to. She’s still a little young to be pulling that kind of stunt.

She reminds him of Kate for a second, actually. Chris grimaces and ducks his head to hide it, and then catches Laura looking surprised and a little uncertain out of the corner of his eye. He hesitates, then sinks a little deeper into the duck, turning that into a real head-bow, before coming over to sit on the far end of the bed from them.

Laura takes a step towards Chris, curious now. She looks at him, sniffs twice, and then shrugs and patters back to snatch up her rabbit toy before Derek can get it. “He’s not pack, but I guess he isn’t going to make trouble,” she says, mostly to Derek and a completely distracted Cora, but with a little up-glance at Scott. “I don’t think we need to chase him off.”

“Chris is just going to hang out with us till your mom’s back from Deaton’s clinic, and Peter and Stiles are back with the tree,” Scott says. He glances around the room, checking out various toys and other children’s things, and then settles on a book with a scrap of paper sticking from it that’s on the nightstand. “Maybe he and I can read—”

“No,” Derek says, very firmly. When Scott blinks, Derek looks a little ashamed, but he still keeps his head shaking. “No. That’s _Peter’s_ book. He said nobody reads it to us but him. Even Mom doesn’t get to touch it.”

Peter Hale is kind of a little shit, even after his family issues are taken into account, but Chris keeps his mouth shut. He’s more interested in Scott’s reaction anyway—Scott looks very amused, for some reason, and just says sorry to Derek and then sits there as Laura tells him that she and Derek have a very important game to get back to anyway.

As the two of them bounce around on the floor, Scott reaches out and shifts Cora’s playpen closer to the bed, and then crawls up to lean against the headboard. He looks over sharply as Chris slowly does the same, then tips the nearer of his shoulders. “That’s actually one of Stiles’ books,” Scott mutters under his breath. “It’s nice that they’ve got a regular storytelling time.”

“Huh,” is all Chris can think of to say. His mother had done a little bedtime storytelling, but looking back, they’d all been at least semi-related to hunting. If not about teaching them about monsters, the stories had been about their family, about all the great hunters who’d preceded him and Kate. And Kate had always gotten impatient with the stories anyway, had resented having to go to bed early no matter what they did.

Scott looks over at Chris again and Chris—tries to find something. He barely gets to see the man as it is, and he knows he should be pushing his chances as he finds them. Especially since with the latest developments, it’s not looking likely that they’ll have that Christmas meeting.

“You look like you’ve done this a lot,” Chris says, and then tries not to wince at how pathetic he sounds. “Taking care of kids.”

“My mom was a nurse,” Scott says. He isn’t offended—he never seems to be offended by the obvious. He’s odd any way you cut it, werewolf or human. “She and my dad separated when I was still pretty young, and she couldn’t always afford daycare so she used to sneak me into the kids’ section of the hospital at work. I knew she and the nurses there would get into trouble if the higher-ups found out, so I just tried to make it easy for them, you know, I’d help out with the younger kids. And I don’t know, I’ve always liked working with them.”

“Oh,” Chris says. Stupidly. “Your mom—she around here?”

Scott goes a little tense, his scent laced through with the sourness of grief, and Chris just—wishes he could live up to his damn words about having more to offer than vendettas. Wishes he’d spent a little less time on hunting and a little more on whatever normal people do, however they learn to not be so wrapped up in their own family that when that blows up on them, the only thing they _can_ do is set fires right back.

“No,” Scott says after a second. He puts his hand up and rubs at the side of his face. The sour tinge to his scent is going down, but he still looks pensive. “No, we…that’s the first thing we check, actually, when we jump. It can get—awkward, you know, if your parents recognize you.”

“I thought you can’t run into yourself?” Chris frowns. “That’s what Stiles told me.”

Scott rubs at his face again, then runs his hand back through his hair. When he runs out of strands to tug, he lets his arm fold between his head and the wall. “You can’t, but sometimes you _were_ there, you just—well, died.”

Chris can’t help a silent ‘shit,’ though he at least ducks his head so that neither Scott nor the kids can see what he’s mouthing to himself. 

“It’s just awkward,” Scott says again, apologetically, as if it’s his fault there’s a ripple of tension between them now. “I mean, you’d think it’d be helpful, right? Because you’ll all be happy to see each other again, and also you can convince them about time travel being real a lot easier.”

“No, I can—I think I can see how it might not go that way,” Chris says hesitantly. “People are…I’ve seen a lot of people grieving, and losing loved ones just—well, it does things to you.”

He stops after that. Pulls his knees up and wraps his arms under his thighs, and pretends he doesn’t feel Scott looking over, being that genuinely sympathetic and concerned. Whatever Scott felt for this daughter some version of Chris has had, Chris knows that can’t account for all of it. By Scott’s own words, that Chris was an asshole to Scott. And Chris also hasn’t ever believed that people can change that much, no matter what their circumstances. He doesn’t think the existence of time travel is going to change his mind about that.

“Yeah,” Scott says. He shifts against the headboard, making it creak as he uncrosses his legs. “Yeah. It does. But it…it’s not like it’s _awful_ for us, seeing them again, and I think that’s the hardest part. I hate to say this, but sometimes it’s just easier when you don’t—when you don’t have a choice about what to do with them. When it’s just, stop this, say that, make this happen.”

A flare of anger twists up an acid, burning taste in the back of Chris’ throat and he has to swallow hard to keep it from coming out as a comment he’ll regret. He might not know what to do with himself, but he does know one thing—killing his father wasn’t enough. He’d thought about it, in those hours right after they’d come back from the distillery, when everybody else had been busy trying to keep Talia alive and keep the kids calm and Chris could’ve just slipped off and nobody would have noticed. Could’ve just riffled around and found the wolfsbane bullets he knows they have somewhere, and shot himself.

He’d thought about it, and what his father did to him and the rest of his family, death alone isn’t going to fix. It doesn’t prove Gerard wrong, and it doesn’t live up to his mother’s sacrifice. The only thing that’s going to do it is to keep living, to show the world that Chris _isn’t_ that weak, isn’t just going to let the bite destroy him.

“Sorry,” Scott says, interrupting Chris’ thoughts. “That—that—I wasn’t talking about you, I really wasn’t, I was—there was this one timeline, where…okay, so first, in our timeline, Stiles’ mom died way, way before we even learned werewolves existed. It was this neurological disease.”

Chris almost tells Scott that the apology isn’t necessary, that if Scott was smelling rage on Chris, it wasn’t Scott so much as remembering the last couple things Gerard had said before shooting his mother. About not having a _choice_ , when really, if there’s one lesson that stands out from all the Argent blood that’s been spilled lately, it’s that everything is a choice. 

But that’s why Chris is sitting here in the first place, fucking up his chances with a werewolf who seems to have known that from the start. So Chris just shuts his mouth on his issues for a second. “Okay, and—”

“And in this other timeline, it wasn’t her, it was Stiles, and he died early. And his parents, when they saw him, they were just—they were _so_ happy,” Scott goes on, his voice dropping. The lower volume makes the underlying thread of pain in his voice stand out that much more. “So happy, you wouldn’t believe…they didn’t care that he was messing with magic and werewolves, they just—they actually started teaching themselves that stuff, so they could help him and us out, and Stiles, he really misses his parents, from our timeline, and he…he was really happy too.”

“Got his second chance, sounds like,” Chris says.

Scott glances at Chris, and then reaches out to touch Chris’ arm, smiling wryly, as Chris starts to wince. “Hey, you wouldn’t know, that’s why I’m trying to…so yeah, we thought so too. We…we finished taking care of things there, it actually took almost no time, that one. But Lydia and I didn’t have our parents there, and it just didn’t—we were going to move on.”

“I thought you can’t go back to a timeline once you’ve left it,” Chris says, frowning. “Doesn’t that mean—”

“It does, and Lydia and I were kind of—well, we weren’t happy. Which is really selfish, I know, you can’t make your friends pick you over family, but we’d all been together for so long,” Scott says. “But that’s why we were going, in the end. Stiles looked happy, but Lydia and I weren’t, and if we’d stayed in that timeline, we just weren’t…it wasn’t going to be good and we didn’t want to ruin it for him.”

Then Scott falls silent for a few minutes. Chris tries and fails to think of something decent to say, and ends up just pushing up and checking on the kids to waste some time. But Laura and Derek tell him he’s making them feel weird, staring at them, so he moves back to the headboard.

“The funny thing is, we were just about to tell Stiles we were leaving and then he shows up in the middle of the night and tells us we gotta go,” Scott says suddenly. He’s staring at the far wall, clearly seeing a different room. “Lydia thought he was possessed. She spent half the night checking him over, and I think she still doesn’t really understand why he did it.”

“Well, why did he?” Chris says. He hesitates, watching as Scott shakes himself a little and refocuses his eyes. “If he was happy.”

“Because he wasn’t,” Scott says. Then he hesitates, his mouth thinning for a second as he struggles with something. “I thought he was, I really did, but the moment he said he wasn’t, I knew I’d been reading him all wrong. Stiles just—he’s a really good actor, but…he wasn’t their kid, they weren’t his parents, and they all weren’t really seeing each other as—it didn’t work out. It just didn’t work out. But that’s what I mean, it’s a lot easier when you don’t wish you were happy to see somebody.”

Chris turns a little so he can get a better view of the other man. Scott’s mostly worked through the remembered grief, going by his scent, but his expression is still a little too tense to just be nostalgic or disappointed.

“So how do you keep trying?” Chris says. For that he gets a surprised look and he almost shuts himself up again, but then he decides however stupid he might sound, this one is worth it. “Because that’s why…that’s why I keep pushing at you. You’re a mess, sure, but you and your friends, you just keep trying. You’re trying to be happy, and I know you don’t think you know what you’re doing now, but you must still think you can be, if you keep trying. I’ve just lived _one_ life, and I’m not even that far.”

“Well, journeys start with a first step, and you want to be happy,” Scott says. “Right? It’s not just part of your vendetta—”

“It’s…complicated, but it’s not just…I want to be happy because I don’t want my father to have fucked up everything for me,” Chris says. “But look, before you say that’s not healthy, well, it’s not healthy to just forget everything too. I’m a mess too, but even I know that.”

Scott laughs. “Yeah, true,” he says, glancing down at the bed between them. “But if you want that, you—”

“I think you could do that,” Chris says. He knows where Scott is going with that, just knows it, some instinct that’s not quite werewolf or hunter kicking in. “I can’t tell you why, all right, but I just—I look at you and I think that. And sure, you’re the nicest to me, and you’re an alpha and I’m a beta now, but that’s not all of it, believe me. I just—I really do just think you could—could make me happy.”

Scott looks up and at Chris and he’s startled, and disbelieving, and neither of those are unexpected. But he’s also—there’s bitterness in his expression, the kind that Chris usually associates with Stiles’ sarcasm.

“I’ve got a really bad track record at that. Not that I haven’t tried,” Scott says, his mouth twisting. “But you should know—”

“But you should know that I don’t really care about your old screw-ups,” Chris says. “I wasn’t around for them, I’m not those people. And I’m selfish, but I’d just like my own shot. At seeing what I can do for you, too. Making you happy.”

He’s too strong, he thinks. The moment the words come out of his mouth, he thinks he’s overdone it and he thinks that Scott is just going to toss his ass out the door and forget even just being pack, taking pity on Chris for that much. He should’ve gone with something about helping, giving Scott another chance. Something nice and friendly and not something that sounds like what his father would say.

But Scott just sits there and listens and looks at Chris. He blinks slowly twice, and then he glances away, but just because Derek’s yelped. As soon as he’s sure the kids are fine, he looks back at Chris and for some reason he doesn’t seem angry or disgusted or even confused. He just looks like maybe he managed to take Chris’ words and peel back all the nasty, raw, bitter layers that makes up Chris these days, and see at least a little of what Chris really means.

“You know what,” he says. He pauses, then drops his chin slightly and laughs ruefully. “You know what, I don’t really see all the old stuff so much when I see you. I did at first, I gotta admit…but it’s going away. And…and I think I do want to see if it’ll keep doing that. I think I do want to get to know you.”

“That’s really all I want,” Chris says quietly. “It’s all I’m asking for.”

Scott nods, and then they both turn forward. Chris looks at the top of Laura’s head, then pushes his hands down into the bed. He hitches himself up, then slides slightly over.

Something touches his arm and he stops where he is. But Scott’s hand doesn’t push or pull. It just rests on his arm for a few seconds. Then it moves down to Chris’ wrist. He looks at it, then away. Then, still looking away, as slowly as he can, he twists his arm so that he can turn his hand over, and Scott’s fingers are lying across his palm instead. He closes his fingers, and Scott doesn’t move away.

* * *

“It’s so convenient that Christmas decorations are really just a bunch of disguised pagan rituals,” Stiles says, driving himself and Talia and Chris out to the preserve. “I mean, seriously, is there any other time of the year where you could load up your car with all the fixings for anti-evil spells and not get a second look?”

“Halloween,” Talia says, deadpan. “Easter. Also New Year’s, depending on which part of California you’re in and whether they go by the lunar calendar.”

So…Stiles is pretty sure Talia and he are finally going to have that you’re-dating-my-baby-brother talk at some point during this trip. Peter was originally supposed to go with them, as the person who’s been in the house most recently and who therefore knows it the best, but Scott is also out, covering off on the preserve borders, and without at least him in the house, the kids had thrown such a fit that Peter had reluctantly agreed to stay with them. So it’s the first time that Talia and Stiles are going to have extended contact with each other—Chris doesn’t count here, he’s obviously planning to only speak when spoken to—without either Peter or Lydia around to interrupt.

Stiles doesn’t feel genuinely threatened, or anything like that. He can hold his own if Talia decides to suddenly turn this into a psycho-Hale timeline, which he doesn’t think is going to happen, and he _can_ do that without totally ruining any chances he’d have at him and Peter making this work out. But he does think this is going to be awkward, and he’s going to willingly put up with it, and he hasn’t done that in a while. He’s concerned about rust, and maybe straining something that hasn’t been properly stretched, and stuff like that.

“That’s the old mile marker coming up,” Talia adds, nodding at a squat stone post mostly overgrown with vines.

Stiles pulls the car over and Talia pops out her claws and he gets both his string of charms and his gun ready, and then they sit tight while Chris pops out with a magicked wreath to hang on the post. They still haven’t figured out what the shadow thing is, but that’s no reason to not put up a few more protective wards.

Besides, Stiles tucked a couple more alarm spells in that one, and he’s hoping he might get some useful diagnostics off it. Because at this point he is just about ready to set fire to his books, he’s so frustrated at all the contradictory evidence they’ve got.

“So,” Talia says.

Stiles jerks and bangs his arm against the wheel—not hitting the horn, thank God—and gives Chris a friendly wave when the man glances back their way. “Yo.”

“Lydia seems very sure that my family’s collection won’t have anything,” Talia says. She doesn’t do anything so gauche as to smirk, but that very lack of visible amusement just confirms to Stiles that the woman is purposefully dragging things out. “To the point that I think I have to ask, is that from prior experience?”

“Not…well, sort of? I mean, look, it’s kind of hard to pick out anything about this town that hasn’t shaded into another timeline,” Stiles says.

“Or about my family,” Talia says dryly. She pauses, and then deliberately looks away from Stiles. “Well, what happened? Did the family library lead you horribly astray, or something like that?”

Stiles honestly feels a little nostalgic for the time when he thought Peter was the biggest troll in the Hale family tree. “No, it’s just…I don’t know, we’ve just never learned anything that…stuff has been useful, but it’s also just kicked off more problems than it solved. And when it’s _not_ useful, it’s really, really not useful.”

“But it didn’t do any harm,” Talia presses.

“I guess in the sense that it just wasted our time, and life just would’ve been a lot easier if we could have asked living people instead of trying to figure out what the hell they meant when they left behind this but not that,” Stiles says, drumming his fingers against the wheel. “And yeah, so we have the living people this time, but Lydia’s just really, really concerned with not repeating mistakes. It’s kind of her thing.”

Talia makes a thoughtful noise, but before Stiles can ask, Chris comes back to the car. He gets in and they drive the rest of the way to the Hale house. Which doesn’t look or vibe any better than the last time Stiles was up. If anything, the area around the house feels even darker and deader than before. 

This time, Stiles gets out first, and Talia and Chris wait till he’s walked the perimeter wards and checked for any breaches. He doesn’t find any, and they know that the shadow thing can sometimes cross things it shouldn’t be able to, but it just—it’s like putting together a smashing outfit for Lydia, or prowling around town for Scott, it just gets Stiles in the right mentality. He might not be able to figure out what’s up, but if it shows, he’s going to be ready to show too.

He waves the other two out and they come cautiously up to the house. Then Talia abruptly detours off to the side, leading them around to the cellar doors. “We’ll get things out of here first,” she says, just before looking sharply at Stiles. “Yes?”

“I’m standing out here,” Stiles says. “Not trying to put all the heavy lifting on you, it’s just…I don’t want us all in the cellar at the same time.”

Talia studies him for a few seconds, but doesn’t ask. She just pulls a piece of paper out of her pocket, and after consulting it, tells Chris to grab two boxes and a locked chest from a certain shelf, while she goes looking for some heirlooms.

That part goes pretty quick, though afterwards Chris needs a couple minutes to blow out his nose; Peter apparently dropped wolfsbane powder all over the cellar, trying to ward off the thing, and Chris accidentally scuffed his foot through a patch. Stiles goes back to the car and roots through his kit and gives Chris a pinch of the burned stuff to snort, and then Chris is good to go.

Next are books from the library, which Talia decides they should access via a window rather than going through the front or back door. She doesn’t let Chris handle those, but instead has him play lookout while she hands the books through the window to Stiles. 

The library takes up one entire side of the first floor and Stiles can see Chris pacing back and forth before the windows as he stacks a load of books in the car. Then—he drops the last book and flares his fingers and mutters under his breath, squinting hard, but when his wards light up, there’s nothing but Chris turning and gesturing to ask whether he needs to get out. No darker spot behind Chris, slightly wrong to be a normal shadow.

Stiles shakes his head, but then hurries back to the window. “I’m still not getting anything, but I think we need to hurry it up,” he tells Talia.

Also to Chris, who’s come over anyway and who is looking uneasy. “I think I’m hearing things,” he says abruptly. “From upstairs. Are you—”

“No, but what are you hearing?” Talia says, climbing out the window with a last book in hand. “Voices or footsteps or—”

“This hiss,” Chris says, raising his hand and pinching his thumb and forefinger together. “Like somebody’s lighting a match.”

Now down on the ground, Talia backs up so Chris can get out, and then she steps forward with her arm up to shut the window. Then she turns suddenly to look at Stiles. “What’s the matter?”

“What?” Stiles says, and he knows he’s being too sharp.

“You looked like hell for a second there,” Chris says, also looking at him.

“I just—hurry up,” Stiles mutters. “Is that it?”

Talia starts to nod, then hesitates. “Well, what’s left aren’t things we need to get for…Peter wanted some things from his—”

“Oh, right.” Stiles presses his lips together, wishing he didn’t have the damn memory of Peter’s eyes lighting up even as Peter tried—and failed, very cutely—to act cool about having his stuff again.

He debates it a little, absently pushing more magic through his wards, old and new. Still not getting anything and if the thing is really fear-based, then the more they run away from it, the more they feed it. On the other hand, he just…doesn’t like it. And on the other, other hand, he’d like to make it up to Peter for leaving him behind with the kids, and—he is a fucking kickass mage, for God’s sake, he might fuck things up on other grounds but he has no reason to be doing it on spellwork.

“Is his room upstairs?” Stiles finally says.

“No, it’s right off the back door,” Talia says. “It should be quick.”

She hasn’t said anything about feeling bad vibes and she looks like if she is, it’s not getting to her the way it is to Stiles and Chris. And she’s not being obvious about it, but Stiles thinks if he asked her opinion, she’d vote for getting Peter his things.

“Whatever you can grab in another ten minutes,” Stiles decides, pulling out his phone. “I mean ten. I’m going to time it and if you’re not out, I’ll boot you out.”

Talia snorts, but just starts walking around the corner. Chris follows her and Stiles notices that the man gives one of the upper windows a wary look. It’s empty, but Stiles makes out the shadow of an old-fashioned four-poster bed inside and he suddenly wonders if he’s looking at the master—the alpha’s bedroom.

Then he shakes his head and snaps himself out of it, and walks around to the back of the house. The back door is already open and he can hear Talia ordering Chris around, drawers being opened and shut. Something rattles against the wall and Stiles jumps before remembering Peter telling him about Talia framing the pelt of his first kill for him.

He smiles, thinking about it, and across the backyard, just where it gives way to the woods, a man’s silhouette suddenly comes into view.

Stiles straightens up and angles his hands a little away from his hips. He stares at the silhouette and it flickers, then disappears. He doesn’t look away, just waits, and the silhouette returns, in front of the tree it’d been behind. Then it disappears again.

Someone’s mad, Stiles thinks without thinking, and then he yanks up both hands, each finger trailing a blazing line of magic, and spins and shoves them into the chest of the shadow figure that’s just appeared on the porch beside him.

The figure contorts like an electrocuted person, strangely tubular appendages flailing up where arms should go, and a sudden vision of Laura and Derek’s small, terrified faces staring back at him through a window bolts through Stiles’ mind. Stiles is chanting, running through every banishing spell that he knows, that and just jamming up the thing with willed power, and the more he does that, the more images he gets. Talia’s blood-flecked face lying on the road, Peter scrabbling away across a dusty floor. And with the images comes a wave of pure hatred, so thick that Stiles feels vomit coming up the back of his throat.

He struggles against that, because if he throws up he’ll have to stop chanting and he knows, he just knows he’s almost got the thing unraveled, and—

Stiles hears Talia shout his name, and then, weirdly, he sees Derek again, wary but not afraid, looking up at him like Derek’s standing right by his foot and asking him where they’re going. And Laura’s suddenly there, pushing Derek away, telling him to get away from her brother, a little alpha with little cherry-red eyes, and he _hates_ both of them.

And then he has this fleeting sense of weightlessness and then he blacks out.

He opens his eyes what feels like right away, but it obviously can’t be because he’s staring up into Peter’s worried face and around that is the rental house. Specifically, it’s the bedroom he and Lydia share.

Peter sags a good two inches, exhaling roughly, and then pushes himself up so that he’s leaning over Stiles again. “Lydia, he’s up!” he yells without looking away.

Stiles hears something off to the side and turns to see Lydia obviously coming from the bathroom, a bottle of painkillers and a glass of water in hand. She hands them to him, waits till he’s done with them, and then steps back.

“You did almost get the thing, but something powered it back up and it threw you across the porch,” she says bluntly. “Talia barely grabbed you before you would’ve broken your skull against the back rail, and then she and Chris got you out of there.”

“Oh. Damn.” Stiles twists back so that he’s staring at the ceiling. “What powered it back up?”

“Talia thinks it’s somehow connected itself to the house,” Lydia says. “She says the wards you put on it were going off like crazy, but she could feel her family’s wards too, and they were fighting you.”

“Right. Shit. I didn’t disconnect those, I left them alone,” Stiles mutters. “I mean, figured they’d help against anything trying to get in. So we should do that. Take those off.”

Peter’s been sitting quietly this whole time, but at that he jerks himself up like he’s going to throw himself over Stiles. Then he puts his feet down on the bed, but he’s still glaring back and forth between Stiles and Lydia. “Are you crazy? You can’t go back out there right now.”

Stiles rolls his eyes. “I know that, I feel like shit, that’d just be feeding whatever the hell it is a nice Stiles-shaped booster. I meant when I don’t feel like shit and _shit_ , did we at least get your stuff?”

Peter stares down at him. Off to the side, Lydia clears her throat, softly enough so that Stiles knows she’s not actually counting on him to look over, and then starts walking towards the door. “I’ll be redoing the wards here,” she says. “Also, Talia called Deaton. He says he can drive back and be here by tonight.”

That…is necessary, and a smart use of resources, even if Stiles personally thinks it’s more convenient to have Deaton out of town. Still, for a second Stiles lies there and wonders when the hell he got so pathetic.

“I don’t—” Peter’s sputtering so badly that he can barely look straight at Stiles, and he keeps lifting his hand like he might try to cover his mouth, only to sputter some more “—I don’t—I don’t want my stuff that much, it’s just—it’s—I can always get—what is _wrong_ with you? I know you’ve done a lot but does time-traveling remove any sense of self-preservation?”

“Sort of,” Stiles says. He’s pretty sure he needs to turn off the sarcasm, but he’s still groggy. That terror sliding around behind Peter’s outrage, for example, he’s probably making that up. “I mean, I have issues too, but—”

“Well, get rid of them!” Peter snaps at him, jamming his hands down on either side of Stiles’ head. “I just—my sister’s getting half-killed in front of me every time I turn around and there’s a homicidal shadow stalking my family and I can’t _deal_ with you dying on me, all right? I just can’t.”

Stiles opens his mouth, then closes it. Because nope, he’s not making up that fear in Peter’s eyes after all. And now he feels like an asshole, and also, he just…has deliberately not been thinking too much about Peter’s level of engagement here, because that’s just extra stress on top of baseline thinking how he’s going to mess this up. But it’s hard to ignore it when it’s right in front of him. That is, Stiles could still try and probably manage it, but he looks up as Peter breathes raggedly and tries very hard not to look as shaken as he is, and he realizes Peter’s actually really, really engaged too.

He probably needs to just schedule a meeting for that shovel talk he deserves from Talia.

“I just…I just want to stop thinking I’m going to lose people right when I just met them,” Peter says, abruptly, far more softly. “When I just…I notice I want them around. Do you have _any_ idea how long it’s been since I’ve wanted other people around? Let alone this many?”

“I could guess, but I think you’d call that using prior knowledge against you,” Stiles says, lifting his hand.

He feels pretty done-in, but Talia must have caught him before he hit anything, period, because except for a swollen ring around his left upper arm, he doesn’t feel physical injuries. And it’s a good thing, because the second his fingers touch Peter’s cheek, Peter folds like a paper house, curling over Stiles, pressing his face into the side of Stiles’ neck, bumping a knee up into Stiles’ hip as Stiles slides his hand from Peter’s cheek to the back of Peter’s head, and then down to rub gently at Peter’s nape.

“Look, I’m sorry,” Stiles finally sighs. “I’m really used to nobody keeping tabs on me except for Scott and Lyds.”

Peter twitches in at the head and knees, like a teenage werewolf-sized clamp around Stiles, and then he lifts his head. He’s at least not crying, but he looks very much like he’s thinking about hitting Stiles. “Do you like living like that?” he demands.

“No,” Stiles says. He pauses and thinks it over, and then shakes his head. “No, but also, I don’t really spend a lot of time thinking about the stuff I can’t change. There’s so much that I can, and…”

He sees the way Peter’s starting to crack open and can’t help himself, he just reaches up and cups his hands around Peter’s face. And Peter, his eyes close a little and he turns his face into the hollow of Stiles’ left palm, and his lashes are dark and long and his mouth is that bubblegum pink, a little shiny because he’s just been chewing that lower lip, and he’s just—he’s the best thing Stiles has seen in a very, very long time.

And then Peter twists his head back and opens his eyes, blue and mad as hell, and Stiles is smiling even before Peter snarls at him.

“You can’t, but I can, and I swear, if you _ever_ —” Peter starts.

Stiles pulls him down and kisses him. Peter makes an angry noise, fighting it, pushing his knuckles into the sides of Stiles’ shoulders, and, when Stiles eases off, makes _another_ angry noise and grabs Stiles by the back of the head and yanks Stiles up again.

So Stiles lets Peter have that kiss. The next couple are his, anyway, as Peter’s anger suddenly and swiftly melts into a relieved longing that Stiles can taste, can feel, can see and hear. The way that Peter’s mouth gets all sweet, falling slackly open as Stiles chases all the nuances with his tongue, the soft but stubbornly clinging way that Peter’s limbs close around him when he rolls them over. The way Peter switches to breathless little noises, hitching up into Stiles’ mouth for each one, his fingers tugging rhythmically, insistently where they’ve fisted up in the front of Stiles’ shirt.

And Jesus, but how he looks when Stiles finally manages to get his head up for the view. All spread underneath, a crush of curls tousled over his forehead and dragging into his eyes as sweat trickles from his temples, and those eyes hazed over like summer sky rippling in the heat, mouth open and still fresh enough from kissing that his healing hasn’t wiped away its swell yet.

“What,” he pants.

Stiles snorts, and then bends to peck at the furrow starting across Peter’s brow. Peter squirms and Stiles pins him by the waist, then slides his hands down under Peter’s ass. Then moves one hand further as Peter gasps into a pretty arch, letting that movement push Peter’s thigh into his grip. 

“Nothing,” he tells Peter, kissing his way down the side of Peter’s face. He grazes his teeth against Peter’s ear, and then angles his head to get under the jawline, pushing in and sucking as Peter whimpers. “Nothing, just, God, you’re so—”

“Don’t say adorable, stop calling me that, I’m still mad at you an—” Peter half-gasps, half-pleads. The further down his neck Stiles gets, the more he moves, till Stiles gets to a spot that makes Peter seize at Stiles’ shoulders and then let out a long, broken, sweet moan. “I’m—”

“You’re adorable, you’re totally adorable, totes adorbs, that’s gonna be a thing, you’ll thank me in ten-something years,” Stiles mumbles, licking and kissing and sometimes just _rubbing_ his face into his own spit, into Peter’s skin. He never buys into that poetic stuff about cherries and peaches and whatever, human skin tastes like salt at best, but the taste of _Peter_ , whatever it is, it’s driving him into a sudden fever and he just can’t stop himself. “Adorable, _fuck_ , you have to be so fucking—pretty fucking eyes, just keep looking at me and the mouth, and bedhead, and even the lanky teenager thing, God, I don’t even have to try to just fold you up—”

Peter’s given up on protesting. He pulls weakly at Stiles’ arms and then at the sides of Stiles’ shirt for a little bit, urging Stiles to get back up to his mouth, but Stiles nips Peter’s collarbone and Peter shudders so hard his neck bows all the way off the bed. And then he just throws his arm over Stiles’ back and hangs from it, making those ridiculously _adorable_ noises as Stiles kisses every inch of his neck. Presses openmouthed ones over Peter’s Adam’s apple, briefly framing it in light teeth marks, then sucks down the tendons, flutters his lips across the pulse.

All of it, all of it, Peter doesn’t stop rocking. It’s like his body’s a sponge, soaking up whatever Stiles does to him, and then he hauls himself up against Stiles and tucks his face back into Stiles’ neck again, and just clings, trembling.

It’s tight enough that Stiles backs off, thinking Peter needs to catch his breath and man, does Stiles not want to have an angry Talia barging in right now, yelling at him for literally kissing Peter unconscious. Well, he thinks, but Peter shifts a little and that’s the crotch of Peter’s jeans pressing up against Stiles and it’s a little too damp for just sweat and Stiles makes a noise.

Peter drops his head back, already in full blush. “Shut up,” he says. “I’m a _teenager_.”

“Oh, hey, I wasn’t making fun,” Stiles says. “I’m flattered, even. I just—”

“Shut up,” Peter says again, and then he blinks and suddenly pushes his hands down between them, working at the front of Stiles’ jeans. “Or—or just—make it up to me or something—”

“I don’t think—” is about as far as Stiles’ remnants of propriety get.

Peter glares at him, and at that point, has half a hand inside Stiles’ fly, for which Stiles’ straining erection is irrationally grateful. “Shut up and do it before I hate you for being an overprotective asshole too.”

“You little blackmailer,” Stiles says, kissing him again.

So okay, Stiles grabs the bottom of Peter’s shirt and pushes it up. Peter makes an annoyed noise and grabs Stiles’ wrist, because obviously, Stiles is starting at the wrong end. Except there are two pert little nipples under that shirt and Peter changes his mind once Stiles gets his mouth on one.

Grabbing at Stiles’ shoulders, head thrown back, moaning, grinding his chest up into Stiles’ mouth. Stiles has to haul Peter’s one hand off him and hold it to the mattress to keep Peter down, and then, when he flicks that nipple with his tongue, he ends up holding the other arm down too. “Fucking chocolate buttons,” he mutters.

“Why am I _junk food_?” Peter groans.

“Uh, why not, you’re both delicious?” Stiles says, looking up, and he laughs at how Peter’s trying to toss his head in embarrassment, like Stiles is going to let him hide his face in the pillows.

He slides back up for a quick kiss, then drops and spends some time on the other nipple. Circles its rim with his tongue, then catches it lightly between his teeth and teases it with his lips. Peter whines and when Stiles releases his hand, it stays gripping the bed.

“Also, more like candy. Adorable smart-mouthed candy who never knows when to stop, never stops trying to get himself the best.” Stiles shifts off the nipple as Peter’s shudders start to get closer together, nuzzling at the breastbone instead as he drifts his hand down, undoes Peter’s fly. Slips his hand in, carefully works out Peter’s cock. “I gotta admit, I sometimes doubt your judgment about what counts as the best, but—hey, but I’m not gonna argue that one right now.”

Peter’s cock is as pretty as the rest of him, softly flushed under the tacky smears, and the first time Stiles draws his finger up the underside, Peter bucks so hard that Stiles grabs his hips and prepares to just let Peter ride it out.

But Peter doesn’t come yet. He’s obviously making that hold back, he’s bitten his lip bloody, but he looks up at Stiles with desperate, imploring eyes. “Please,” he pants. “Please, please—please—in me, please—”

“Fuck,” Stiles says, and screw which of them is the teenager, he almost comes.

So right, Stiles tries to do good but he’s not necessarily a good person, or even thinking about good just then. Mostly he’s just thinking thank God that he stashes salve base in the bedside drawer for emergency herbal work.

Peter half-lifts himself and kicks off his jeans while Stiles is getting that, and then he crushes belly-down under Stiles, moaning and fisting his hands in the sheets, the small, lean globes of his ass tightening distractingly against Stiles’ stomach. Stiles has to bite Peter’s shoulder to get him to let Stiles get an arm under them, and then rolls them onto their sides, using the hand in front to slick up Peter’s cock while he works the hand in back up between Peter’s legs.

“Oh, _oh_ , no, wait—” Peter gasps, just as Stiles’ fingertip breaches him. 

Stiles freezes but Peter jams himself back and ends up down to the second knuckle, and then Stiles figures it out and stops pumping Peter’s cock as Peter hangs onto the bed, out of it enough to shred the sheets a little. He kisses the back of Peter’s neck instead for a distraction, sliding his mouth around to latch onto the side whenever Peter starts to bear down too hard on his fingers. Peter’s still shivering, but he manages to not come.

When Peter’s stretched enough, Stiles goes to take him by the hips, but Peter’s hands come off the bed, claws glinting. Stiles bites Peter on the throat, gently, and the hands drop. Then retract their claws and just ball into fists as Stiles makes do with one hand to guide in his cock, and circles the other one around both Peter’s wrists to keep accidental clawing at bay.

“Stiles,” Peter whispers, a ragged, taut sound, his whole body flexing as he takes that last inch of cock. “Stiles, Stiles, oh, God, _oh oh ooooooh_.”

“Good, good,” Stiles is rambling. “So good, fuck, okay, okay, now just…it’s okay, Peter, just come on, just yes, come on, roll your hips a little, and yeah, yes, your adorable little werewolf ass, yes, now just—come on, just for me, for me—”

He drags his hand over Peter’s hip and then wraps it around Peter’s cock, pulling it back from where it’s been slapping into Peter’s belly. Gives that nice, slow pumps, no rush, Peter’s trembling so badly, swinging between where Stiles has his wrists pinned and where Stiles’ cock is spreading him, that working him would just be cruel. And Stiles is really, really trying not to be that.

So just a long upstroke, a little flick of the thumb over the already-leaking slit, and then back down. Then up, nuzzling into Peter’s nape as Peter breaks into incoherent noises, and down and up and Peter starts back against him and presses there, using Stiles for support as he comes and falls apart.

Honestly, that’s pretty much it for Stiles. Just the way Peter’s leaning into him, he doesn’t even really need to fuck into Peter, just has to let that pressure sink against him and he’s good to go. And he really, truly, hasn’t been this good in ages.

“Wow,” Peter mumbles a little later. They’re still pressed together, still half-clothed, sticky as hell. For that matter, Stiles is still in Peter and he’s half-thinking for an eighteen-year-old version, that’s probably rushing the kink, but then Peter arches a little and sighs a little and relaxes back like he’s as comfortable as a dozing cat before a fireplace. “Mmm. Going to go to your head, you…you time-traveling…know-it-all asshole, but that was _way_ better than people make it sound.”

Stiles…sort of lies there for a second. “What?”

He stares at the back of Peter’s neck as Peter tenses a little, pink waving up that bent nape. “What do you mean, what? Do you think I just jump into bed with anybody?”

“No. Nope, not in the least.” Stiles jerks himself into action, pulling his arms around Peter and tilting them so he can kiss in behind Peter’s ear, and once Peter starts to soften, he gives Peter’s throat a good, firm nip too. Then presses his brow against the spot as Peter shivers and brings up his hands to grip at Stiles’ forearm, a little tentative at first but then firm and tight. “And it _totally_ is going to my head, but you like it like that, you know you do. You like having quality control, you’re only letting in the best.”

Peter snorts. It’s half-hearted, but the slight tightening of his fingers on Stiles’ arm isn’t. “And I am, am I?”

“You’re so adorable when you’re trying to make me flatter myself,” Stiles says. He kisses Peter’s nape again, then lets his head rest against the bed.

“I just—I want to know I’m not just—setting up to lose,” Peter says, very quietly.

Stiles breathes against the back of Peter’s neck, watching the small, stiff hairs right at the bottom of the hairline bend and then straighten, the flesh at their bases bumping up. Funny, he thinks. He always assumed this part would be the worst.

Well, just goes to show what he knows, even after all his time-jumping. “I think you’re stuck with me,” he says. He breathes in again. “Thing is, I love you.”

Peter goes stiff, then slackens just as abruptly. He leans his head back, till Stiles’ mouth is pressing into his nape, and twists their fingers together. “Lucky for you, I love you too,” he whispers, trembling again.

He’s not the only one. “Yeah,” Stiles says, whispering back against Peter’s skin. “Yeah, lucky.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of plants traditionally used for Christmas decorations, such as holly and yew, are also viewed as anti-evil protection in various cultures' folklore.


	5. Chapter 5

“I don’t mean to pry, but you just seem very…upset,” Deaton says politely, eyeing the fragments of herbs flying away from Lydia’s knife. “I thought it’d be best to head right over once I was back in town, but maybe we could all use a little—”

“Downtime?” Lydia snaps. “Yes, that sounds like a fantastic idea. Why don’t we put on our coats and go caroling while we’re at it? There are _so_ many places in town where we haven’t been attacked yet, after all.”

“He really didn’t deserve that one,” Talia says. In a very mild tone, and when Lydia puts down the knife and looks over, the woman merely gives her a faintly curious expression back. “He wasn’t even here, Lydia, and anyway, it was my idea to head to the house earlier than planned. If you’re going to yell—”

“I am not yelling,” Lydia says acidly. “I am a _banshee_. If I were yelling, none of you would have intact eardrums.”

Talia’s brows tick up a little. She’s still calm, but it’s the dangerous smooth calm before the thunderheads roll in. Then she shrugs and turns on the shoulder she has leaning against the doorway, looking at Deaton. “I think if we all meet back here in an hour, that should be enough time for you to run home and wash up.”

“That should be plenty,” Deaton says with obvious relief. He steps back out of the kitchen, adjusting the duffel bag slung from his shoulder, and then scurries off.

“Peter’s still trying to get Cora to sleep, anyway,” Talia says, flicking a look at the ceiling. “We should wait for him on this one, he knows the house wards better than I do.”

“And here I was under the impression that someone had gone over _those_ with him, or was that not the purpose of the closed door?” Lydia mutters. She uses her knife to sweep the chopped herbs aside.

Or she tries to, but the juices from the crushed fronds stick about a third of the pieces to the board, and when she scrapes at the bits, she only manages to squeeze out even more juice. She bites back an irritated noise and flips the knife over to try the dull edge, and when that doesn’t improve matters, just pushes back her sleeve and pinches off the bits with her fingers, a clump at a time.

“Okay, so…Talia, hate to be secretive and all, but could you give us a second?” Stiles says.

“I told Deaton we’d meet back in an hour,” Talia says. Her footsteps go into the hall, then pause. “Though Stiles, if we could find some time after that…”

Stiles sighs heavily. “Uh, yeah, we should—just get that over with and go into this with a clear…yeah, sure, I’ll find you.”

“I think the stuff in the garage is probably done, I can go take it off the racks,” Chris mutters to Scott. “You want anything from out there while I’m at it?”

“No, just…knock before you come back in, and if you don’t hear anything, go out and use the front door, okay?” Scott says. “Sorry, I know that’ll be really inconvenient, but—”

Chris says that he’s got it and then the garage door opens and shuts behind him. The air fuzzes slightly as Stiles puts the privacy wards back up, and then it settles down. Except for where two pairs of eyes are burning into Lydia’s back.

“Okay,” Stiles says after a couple minutes of silence. “Okay. So, taking stock really quick, I basically did the magic equivalent of sticking your finger in a power socket, but I’m back up and running, all my melted fuses replaced, and we still managed to get the Hales’ stuff out. I haven’t had the time to look through all of it yet, but I think Peter and I have figured out a way to take _their_ wards down remotely so—”

“If it’s tied to the house, then taking those down may just end up freeing it,” Lydia points out. Still scraping semi-pulped herbs off the cutting board.

A little irritation starts to filter into Stiles’ voice. “And I have thought of that, because I didn’t lose my grasp of basic magic fuckery just because we can’t figure out this—”

“You know it’s not your fault that we haven’t figured it out yet, right?” Scott breaks in.

“Damn it, Scott,” Stiles hisses, right as Lydia’s patience finally runs out.

She pushes the board away and turns around. There’s a loud clatter—she hit the board too far and it’s slammed into the tap instead of just dropping into the sink—but Lydia flinches more as a token than anything else, the frustration boiling up in her running far too deep to be bothered with mere politesses now.

“It’s not _just_ that we can’t figure it out, you idiots,” Lydia snaps. “It’s that this thing is clearly getting stronger and we can’t detect it or reliably ward it off, let alone _figure it out_. We _told_ them—”

“Lyds, you—would you just—” Stiles says, half-hunching up in his chair, his voice rising with his intentions to stand and probably reach over and shake her. “We’re—”

“We told her, we told Talia and Peter that we would _take care_ of this!” Lydia says. She doesn’t care that she’s coming off as hysterical, as an emotional woman who just can’t seem to see reason. She cares that _they_ just don’t seem to understand the true level of the threat they’re facing. “We told them and now we’re not—”

“We’re going to!” Stiles half-shouts at her.

“Well, we say that but we aren’t doing it!” she shouts back.

“And it’s not because we don’t _care_ ,” Scott snarls, eyes flashing, voice gravelly enough that Lydia thinks she feels the vibration of it come up through the floor. 

He rarely uses his werewolf mannerisms on them. Not because they wouldn’t work on Lydia and Stiles, because they do—not the same way as they would on a werewolf, but even an alpha like Scott is still an alpha werewolf. And Lydia, at least, hasn’t lived this long by ignoring the primitive instincts that tell her when something’s capable of taking her out.

Besides, the fact alone that Scott is willing to be this angry is a shock. They rib him about his altruistic tendencies, his preference for coddling over firm responses, but in all honesty, the Scott who keeps them company now is a long, long way from the dreamy-eyed, good-intentioned boy Lydia once knew. This Scott, he might still try to right the world, but it’s been a long time since he’s shown enough energy to be upset over its wrongs. He expects those now just as much as she does, and he doesn’t have the resources to waste any more than she does. Usually.

“It’s not,” Scott says more softly. The red fades out of his eyes, but even plain brown they’re forceful enough to make her wary. “And it’s not because we aren’t trying, and it’s not because _you_ missed something—”

Stiles sucks in his breath and glances sharply at Scott. Then he turns to Lydia, but he backs up as she stabs her finger at Scott. “There has to be something, it shouldn’t take this long,” she says. “If we weren’t—”

“If we weren’t what? If we weren’t already shadowing them everywhere, and bugging them about their family, and—and is that it? You didn’t bug them enough? You didn’t hold down Talia and Peter and make them predict that their uncle they didn’t know was coming would show up with Gerard?” Scott says, his voice rising again. He makes an incredulous noise, leaning back, and then suddenly he’s crossed the room and holding Lydia by her shoulders. “Lydia, for God’s sake, this is _hard_. It’s not rocket science, it’s _worse_ because every single time it’s different, and it’s just not all on you, all right? It’s not you. It’s not.”

“I know exactly what face you’re going to make, and what thoughts are going to go with it, but just listen to him, would you?” Stiles says. He comes up too, a little slower, not angry but worried in a way he rarely lets show so plainly. “We’re gonna do this, Lyds. We’ll do it or die trying, that’s always—”

Scott grimaces, and then gives Stiles a sideways look. “Do we want to go with that one?”

“Okay, unfortunate phrasing,” Stiles says after a second. “But the point is—”

“The point is, there’s no point in settling down if the people you’re doing that for are dead,” Lydia says, watching them. “I’m just trying to remind us about that.”

Stiles flinches. A flicker goes through Scott’s eyes, but it’s more sadness than hurt, and he just tightens his lips as he looks at Lydia. “The point is, it’s not going to make you feel better or help us solve this if you just keep acting like—like the only reason this is happening is because of us. It’s not. And—”

“Time travel,” Lydia starts.

“—and we changed what was going to happen, I know, but things were going on before we got here and these people aren’t puppets, and we’re not puppetmasters, and we all make our own choices,” Scott says sharply. He lifts his hands from her shoulders, jerks them down as if he might grab her again, and this time for a shake. Then he carefully takes his hands away and lets them hang down by his sides. “All of us, them and us. And I don’t know why you’re not reminding us about that too, but if you won’t, well…there. I just did.”

Then Scott turns and he walks over to the garage door. He actually opens it and walks out, and Lydia hears a surprised snippet from Chris before the door shuts.

“It’s not because Peter and me, is it?” Stiles says suddenly, awkwardly. Digging at the side of his face with his fingers, when she looks over at him. “Or…or whatever Scotty there has going on with Chris, and man, what is it with that family and him? But anyway, unnecessary sidebar, just…just Lyds, you’re not—this isn’t like…”

“Stiles, my life does not depend on your romantic misadventures,” Lydia sighs. She steps back towards the sink, idly noting that she still has herb bits on her fingers, and then puts her elbows up and just leans against the counter. Her anger’s vanished at some point, just completely left, and now she has nothing to hold her up but her dignity.

And that, she admits, is worn down. She lifts her hand to rub at her forehead, then catches herself with a sigh and just reaches over to turn on the tap, flicking her fingers through the running water. Stiles watches her for a few seconds, the mix of guilt and worry on his face making him look…younger, oddly, maybe because it’s a little closer to how he was when they’d made their first jump.

“It’s not like me. You’re not like me,” Stiles says suddenly. “You don’t have to—nobody’s saying that once it’s all over, you have to take off right away. It’s not like it’s really that _weird_ here, in terms of our issues, and anyway, you’ve never been looking for perfect, you were never that stupid.”

“I’m not just looking for a soft landing either,” Lydia says, and then grimaces, even though she knows Stiles knows her well enough to not take that the wrong way. “I’m not talking about you. And we’re not talking about me. I—fine, I’m letting the stress get the better of me. But we do have a serious problem, Stiles, and we haven’t dealt with something this persistent in a while.”

“I don’t think great time-traveling savior skills are the kind that get rusty, but yeah, I hear you,” Stiles says. He’s a little slow about it, reluctant to change the subject, but after a few more seconds of peering at her, he seems to accept that that will be all she’ll give him right now. “So look, it’s smacking us in the face at this point that the shadow thing has a personal connection to the Hales. Some of the books we brought back have family history stuff, we should look into old vendettas, ask Talia—”

“You said it showed you Talia and Peter and the children,” Lydia says. “Why old vendettas? All the memories you mentioned sound recent.”

Stiles starts to answer, then instead turns and goes to the fridge. He gets out some orange juice and pours himself a glass before offering it to Lydia. When she declines, he pours a second glass anyway and sets it aside on the counter, then puts the juice carton back in the fridge. Doing all the things he does when he’s working out one of his sideways insights.

“I know, and that was throwing me. Especially the kids, because seriously, they’re tiny, who could they have possibly pissed off that badly?” Stiles finally says, frowning into his glass. “Derek isn’t even grumpy yet.”

Lydia frowns as well. “You think it’s angry at the children? You didn’t mention—”

“I said it felt like it was out to get all the Hales and that should be enough to put Talia on alert, not that she wasn’t already,” Stiles says sharply. “What, do you think it’s a good idea to make her even more paranoid about them?”

“I think she’s been much easier to work with since we cut back on the patronizing, but fine, your call,” Lydia says.

Stiles gives her a wry, acknowledging smile, but his eyes say he’s already back to thinking things over. “Anyway, it’s something about the kids, but realistically, it can’t _be_ the kids. It could be trying to get at Talia through the kids, but it just…it felt like the thing had a whole separate well of hate for them, on top of its hate boners for her and Peter. So I was thinking maybe an old vendetta because maybe it’s not the kids so much as what they mean.”

“Descendants? Heirs?” Lydia suggests. “Continuing the line?”

“Or something like a poltergeist, right, with the part where they keep saying it reminds them of their dad,” Stiles says. “Those get more out of the fear of children than adults. And at the fight with Gerard, it slapped Peter around, but couldn’t really touch Scott or even Talia, even though she was half-dead—”

“But it probably killed their parents,” Scott says. At some point he slipped back into the kitchen—without Chris—and he looks apologetic as both Stiles and Lydia start. “Sorry. It’s just, remember, the bodies, they were really mangled—”

Stiles makes a face. “I know, this is what I mean about all the contradict—wait. What if _it_ got mangled, too? I mean, we know Granddaddy and Grandmommy Hale got it good, but if they gave back just as good…and this thing, it hasn’t recovered but it’s trying to. That’d help explain why it’s so hard to ID, we’re looking at a mutilated specimen.”

“So it went for Peter because he’s still young and it didn’t know he knew magic, but now…it’s going after the children because they’re easy boosts?” Lydia says. And as much as she’s seen, she can’t help feeling a little cold then.

Neither Stiles nor Scott look much more comfortable at the thought. Scott twists his head up to look at the ceiling, swaying as if he might just charge up the stairs to double-check that the kids are still there. Then he visibly pulls himself together and just picks up the glass of juice Stiles poured for him.

“I…I still feel like it’s more personal than just survival,” Stiles says after a moment. “It’s more like Jennifer Blake, right, she laid out all that bullshit about avenging the overlooked, but she was building her revenge on the bodies of people she deliberately overlooked. And you don’t do that unless you basically think the whole world owes you one.”

“If it’s another darach, it wouldn’t be the kids anyway, right?” Scott mutters, sipping his juice. “They’re too young, you need to hit puberty before you count for that sort of stuff.”

“And we have nobody in this house who counts anyway,” Stiles says absently, as his phone buzzes in his pocket.

He reaches for it, then jerks his hand and arm across himself and away from Scott, who’s suddenly doubled over, coughing and choking, the hastily-dropped glass of juice rattling dangerously on the counter behind him. Stiles looks down at Scott, eyes wide, and then reaches for Scott’s shoulder. Scott waves him off and grabs the edge of the counter, hauling himself up against it, still choking.

“Buddy?” Stiles says.

“How—how do you—” Scott gasps.

Stiles blinks at him, and then goes full-face red in less than a second. “Oh…shit, um, you didn’t hear th—I mean, Chris! Chris! I take it back, hunters are super-conservative and he’s not wearing a wedding ring here, we don’t know that he’s—”

Lydia looks around, picks up a wooden spoon, and walks across the kitchen. When Scott’s head bobs up, she swings the spoon under it and hits him squarely in the solar plexus. She makes him lose his grip on the counter and he flops down on his ass on the floor, grabbing at his chest, but the chokes go to coughs, and then to long, slow wheezes.

“So not only did you stain the bed that _we_ both sleep in,” Lydia says, turning to Stiles. “You devirginized _Peter Hale_ in it.”

“I can neither confirm nor deny, and this is completely not relevant to our problem,” Stiles half-yelps, half-pleads. “Also, Jesus, Lyds, can’t you…I don’t know…use a metaphor? We’re going to be the first people ever to kill a true alpha by—”

“’m fine, I’m fine,” Scott grunts, slowly getting back to his feet. He leans himself against the counter, thumping his chest, and then a smile flickers over his face. He gives Stiles a poke on the arm. “For the record, I have not, and am not, asking Chris.”

“Well, that isn’t relevant here,” Lydia says, echoing Stiles. The first spark of amusement has faded and now she’s just reminded that the stakes have, impossibly, gotten higher for this world.

“Anyway,” Stiles says. He pauses and looks between them, wary, and when neither of them prod him, his shoulders drop a little in relief. “Anyway. So Hale family history.”

“That’s going to take too long,” Lydia says. She shakes her head, then walks back across the kitchen and turns off the sink tap. Green specks are still present under her nails, but Stiles is right, perfect isn’t what they’re looking for now. “Too long, we’re always—we’re always looking at what’s already happened. We need to be more proactive.”

Stiles looks worried again, but all he does is let out an exasperated sigh. “Well, what, should we just _ask_ the shadow thing why it’s here?”

“I’m a banshee,” Lydia reminds them.

Scott lifts his head sharply, while Stiles goes very still. Then Stiles’ hand shoots out and seizes Scott by the arm, just as the other man would’ve started across the kitchen.

“It’s not all on you,” Stiles says. “Even us, taking care of us, we’re not on you either, Lyds.”

“I—” Lydia starts, hard and angry, and then she looks at them. She pulls up her shoulders and wraps her arms around herself, and just sinks back against the counter. “I know. But I’m still a banshee, and we still have a shadow monster after us, and before we can even decide what to do after, we have to get through it first. We all know that.”

They still don’t look happy, but neither of them argue with her, not on that.

* * *

“If it’s not a séance, then why are you all so nervous about it?” Talia says.

“Well, Lydia might not be channeling anything, but that doesn’t mean that the nasty dead things can’t still get to her,” Stiles snaps.

Then he grimaces and puts his hand up to rub over the top of his head, probably remembering that it’s just him and Talia in the basement, and he’s more than a little on the back foot at the moment. Even if Talia can _hear_ her brother’s sneakers scuffing the floor just outside the basement door.

“Look,” Stiles says, looking up at her. “Can we just get this over with? Just tell me how bad you’re gonna kill me if I hurt Peter, and I’ll tell you I’ll hold myself down for it, and then we can just go back upstairs and actually get some work done.”

Talia folds her arms over her chest. “Fine. How about, I do not appreciate it any more when you use my brother to distract me than when you were calling him evil.”

Stiles opens his mouth, closes it, and then backsteps towards a nearby shelf while mutely jabbing his finger at her. He’s such an odd duck, Talia thinks, and the oddest thing about him is how he keeps managing to make his oddness, well, odd, even compared to their previous interactions. “You people are so _cranky_ ,” he finally says. “Why are you always so…I mean, seriously, I think it would lower everybody’s cortisone levels if you just let the ball slip a little once in a while.”

“Since you’ve clearly been friends with Lydia for a long time, I don’t think you actually believe that,” Talia says.

They look at each other for a few seconds, and then Stiles turns back to the shelf, moving aside boxes and muttering under his breath about three more to grow, God. Talia is supposed to be helping him, but she decides it’s probably better for both their nerves if she just stays clear. So she looks around for a seat, then picks her way through the boxes on the floor till she can sit down on one of the chests she and Chris brought back from the house.

“Peter’s my little brother,” Talia says. She watches Stiles’ hands slow, then whip down quick to catch a small box that was teetering on the edge of the shelf. “I’ve always looked after him, and I think even if we were both betas, I’d be like that. He’s just so…he gets so ahead of everybody, he’s just so smart and impatient, and…I’m not my parents, I don’t think that that has to be a bad thing. But when you’re a werewolf, standing out on your own, it’s…”

“Not the best possible use of your potential protections?” Stiles says, fiddling with a box.

Talia smiles. “That’s a nice way to put it.”

“Yeah, well, I’m no candidate for sainthood, but I have a working grasp of tact,” Stiles mutters. He puts the box down, rests his hand on it, and then takes a deep breath, turning around. “So look—”

“The thing is, I also left him with my parents before he was old enough to really stand up to them. Not that he didn’t try, because he’s him, but…my father was one of the strongest alphas west of the Mississippi for a reason,” Talia says. She takes a breath herself, kneading her jeans just above the knees. “And there were reasons, I wanted to take him but I didn’t think I could back then, but that’s all done, and can’t be undone, as I understand time travel now. Still, it—it colors things, and I might be his alpha now, but I won’t be the kind who ignores that.”

Stiles stands by the shelf and listens to her, only his eyes moving, and only then so he can blink. His gaze stays fixed on the same point on her face, on the bridge of her nose. He has a real presence, even if he still looks years younger than her; when he’s not masking it with his jokes and nervous tics, his magic is a palpable force around him, a frisson just on the edge of the senses.

“I’m pretty sure I’m still getting a shovel talk,” he finally says. A little flat because the humor’s not there, though he’s not angry either.

“Well, yes, you are,” Talia says, shrugging. “I’ll bury you, Stiles. I don’t care what you’ve done for my family, or who you bring from other timelines, or what magic you have. Peter’s my brother, I’ll bury you. But what I’m trying to say is…is I’m going to leave it up to Peter to decide if he ever wants that. It might kill _me_ , but I left him and…I trusted he’d end up okay. I’d be doing him wrong to take that trust back now.”

She looks away at the end. Not because Stiles is that unnerving—he’s not, he’s strong but she can acknowledge that and acknowledge that her family’s gone a long way towards inuring her to most types of terror—but because she…she’s just thinking, Peter’s grown up so much when she still remembers her mother showing her how to hold him as a baby. The chest she’s sitting on, the heirlooms inside aren’t all to do with weapons and old battle trophies and family safeguards. Some of the things really are just keepsakes, and she can remember very clearly the way she and her brother had played with them, back in the basement of _their_ house.

Peter’s grown up, and Talia is a mother of three and the Hale alpha. And honestly, she thinks, looking down at the chest’s lock, she isn’t sure she ever believed she’d live that long. The Hales were—are—a strong pack, but life expectancy for werewolves still isn’t that good. But she’s made it this far. They might still have dangers ahead, but she really has.

“I liked Peter before, sometimes. Other ones,” Stiles says. He pauses and waits till she looks at him again, absently dusting his hands against his hips. “I liked them, but I never really _liked_ them, if you get what I mean. They were—they were evil, a lot of them, but they also were fun. And hot. And mostly, just, they were good for certain moods, doing certain things but I never…I never met one who I thought really, honestly, wanted to think beyond the next thing he wanted. But your brother, he—I want to stay. I actually want to stay, really stay, live through stuff the long, hard, normal way. And as long as he wants me to, I swear, I’m going to make sure it works for him.”

“He adores you,” Talia says. “He doesn’t even just—he doesn’t just love you, I hope you see that. Peter can love people—he loved our parents, we both did, even if I think I’d probably be happy to kill them now, and also that Peter wouldn’t mind that. But he adores you.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know, and believe me, that just—I just know I’m going to screw that up,” Stiles says, with a short, rueful laugh. His eyes drop to the floor, then come back up to her face. “I’m not…exactly dream stable-partner material. But I’ll try, all right? I’m always going to try.”

Talia eyes him for a little longer, and then nods. “Well, he’ll tell me if you don’t,” she says, and she does smile, teeth showing, when Stiles twitches. “So now that that’s out of the way, why is Lydia so dead-set on sacrificing herself? She doesn’t even like our family.”

“She—wait—hey, goddamn it, I’m madly in love with your brother but I totally saw what you did there,” Stiles says, back to jabbing his finger at her. “And Lyds is not sacrificing herself, she is a highly-trained banshee who has mental shields that can withstand an Archduke of Hell, let alone some stupid shadow thing who just wants to suck the life from your family.”

Talia can’t help checking for her kids’ heartbeats, or that there’s an adult heartbeat in the same room with them. But she can do that and she can narrow her eyes at Stiles at the same time. “The stupid shadow thing laid you out for three hours.”

“Happens,” Stiles says with a shrug. He’s as stubborn as her damn brother.

“And when you woke up, Lydia came downstairs and apologized to me for not securing my parents’ house properly,” Talia says. “That’s the second time she’s apologized to me for not protecting my family when she didn’t have a reason to, and unlike you and Scott, she doesn’t seem to have any real personal interest here. And don’t tell me it’s about owing the versions of my kids who died for you. That makes sense up to a point, but I think I’ve gotten to know you all well enough to know when that point ends.”

Stiles wants to throw her off with a joke, she can see it in his face, even if she can’t smell it due to those damn scent maskers. But he hesitates, and his eyes flick past Talia, not to the door where Peter is _still_ lurking, but to the corner that would be underneath the kitchen, where Lydia and Deaton are still plowing diligently through some of the local-history logs Talia took from the house. Because Lydia might be insisting on her way, but she isn’t going to leave any stone uncovered either.

“She does take it personally,” Stiles finally says. “Not how Scott and I do, yeah, but she does. The thing about Lydia that you need to understand is…is she’s the one who talked us into jumping in the first place.”

Talia frowns. That’s not exactly what Peter told her that Stiles had said before, but she just manages to keep herself from saying that. Stiles probably is smart enough to guess that Peter’s passing back information, but if not, that’s the sort of thing that the two of them will have to work out now. Seeing as Talia is, as she said, going to leave it up to Peter.

“Our original timeline was just really, really fucked-up,” Stiles goes on. He half-turns to the shelf and starts taking off boxes and putting them into a bigger box near his feet. “I mean, you could still live in it, sort of. You weren’t all the way back to the Dark Ages, there was tech, but it just…it’s gonna be different when the world population’s cut by half, optimistically estimating.”

“Well, so it makes sense to leave,” Talia says.

Stiles glances up at her, then snorts. “Yeah, I guess, but…I don’t know, by the time we hit on time-travel, we’d just lost so many people. Scott and me—Lydia wasn’t antisocial, all right, she had friends besides us, but…I guess you could say Scott and I had bigger losses. And it just…seems like you’re never really going to get them back, even if you find them before all bad things happen. You’re still going to remember losing them, if that makes sense.”

“I…can’t say that I feel it the way you do, but I think I see what you might be getting at,” Talia says slowly. “Did you already know it wouldn’t be your original timeline?”

“Oh, yeah, we did, we worked that out beforehand. I mean, we were really worried that we’d accidentally fuck shit up in the new timeline if we did it wrong,” Stiles says. He pauses and watches his hand tighten around the box in it till the cardboard dents, and then he jerks his shoulders and head back and drops the box with the others. “Which we did anyway, just goes to show you’re always going to miss something…anyway, it was just, what’s the point? If we go, we’re not really fixing what _happened_ , we’re just pretending it didn’t happen. And if we’re doing that, then why not just stay and see how the world ends, and at least we’ll maybe all manage to make it into the same gravesite.”

Talia sucks in her breath. Stiles looks up at her and she composes herself for his benefit, but she’s still thinking of Peter talking about their father threatening him with memory loss. And Peter just sitting there and telling her, as if he didn’t need to think it over at all, that he considered that the worse fate.

“So Scott and me, we were just going to stay put and kick it,” Stiles adds after a second. He takes one last box off the shelf, then stoops and picks up the carry box from the floor. It doesn’t seem that heavy, but it’s a bit of an awkward size and he hikes up his knee to brace the bottom as he resettles it in his arms. “Lydia talked us out of it. Well, that, and Der—that Derek, he told us he’d kick our asses if we didn’t leave him to die in peace.”

From the way Stiles says that, bitter and wistful, Talia knows her son—that version—wasn’t speaking as an enemy. And she doesn’t know this man who shared her son’s name, who did enough to send these three her family’s way, but for a moment she just wonders if his mother— _that_ Talia—was proud of him, and if he ever knew that. She hopes so.

“We’re cranky,” she says, prompting when Stiles falls silent.

“Cranky, and yet, I’ll admit, you Hales have a gift for motivating people,” Stiles says. He’s a little closer to his usual offhand manner, but that fades as he makes his way towards Talia. He’s glancing to either side, making sure he doesn’t trip in the crowded surroundings, but the grimace on his face isn’t down to only concentration. “Lydia sat us down and told us—she basically told us, _we’re_ going to be her big losses if we didn’t leave, and if we did that to her, she’d never forgive us.”

Talia nods. “So she guilted you.”

“ _So_ cranky,” Stiles says. Then he sobers again. “She also said…and this is what I think you wanted to know—she said if we came with her, she’d make sure it was better. She promised she’d find a place where we’d be all right. And look, Scott and I aren’t that kind of asshole, it’s not like even back then, we held her to that. We’ve told her over and over—but she won’t let that go. She just won’t.”

He’s just about to Talia at that point. Talia swings her legs out of the way, but Stiles stays where he is, looking at her over the box. He waits till he sees something in her face, and then he nods and continues on towards the stairs.

“Thank you,” Talia says. “I appreciate it.”

“Well, if we’re staying and all, and anyway, after a few near-death experiences, the secret-keeping just starts to get silly,” Stiles says, going up on the first step. Then he grunts and backs off as the box runs into the end of the rail. He adjusts how he’s holding it and then starts back up, with a glance over his shoulder at Talia, who’s following. “So…you worried about Lydia?”

“I worry about all of you,” Talia says dryly. She leans against the bottom of the stairwell and waits for Stiles to get high enough up that she doesn’t think she’ll be at risk of accidentally getting a box jammed into her if he startles. “Though these days it’s a little less precaution, a little more…”

“Friendly concern?” Stiles suggests.

“Concern,” Talia says. She pauses, then shakes her head as she steps onto the stairs. “Just concern. It comes with the alpha job, you know. You need to make sure the whole pack is all right, not just your favorites.”

Stiles’ foot slips. He curses and twists sideways, catching his shoulder against the wall, and then he throws himself forward and rushes the last few steps. He looks like he’s going to slam himself into the back of the door and Talia hurries after him, suppressing her own curse, wondering again why Peter can’t find somebody with at least a little more self-preser—

The door wheels open and Stiles bursts up onto the landing and right into a frantic-to-startled Peter’s arms. “Oof,” Stiles says, just keeping the box from bashing into Peter’s face as the two of them sway together. Then he steadies himself, and he sneaks a peck at Peter’s cheek before stepping back. “Good timing, wouldn’t want to bleed all over the kids’ gifts.”

“That’d definitely result in disappointment, they’ll think they’re getting real prey instead of boring old socks and chew toys,” Peter says, though he’s still blinking in surprise.

Stiles looks at him, then rolls his eyes and walks off. “Why are you all _trolls_ , and why do I find it cute. There’s something wrong with me, swear to God.”

Peter blinks again, turning as if he might follow, and then he slides back and looks at Talia. “What’d you do to him?” he says, just a shade more nervous than accusing.

“Talked,” Talia says. Then she laughs and she puts her arm over her brother’s shoulders, ignoring how he scrunches up his face and tries to stick his elbow between them. “Just talked, Peter. I told you, as long as you think it’s what you want…”

“I know, I know,” Peter grumbles. He runs his hand back through his hair, then gives her a slightly furtive look. “And I’m glad we don’t have to have that stupid argument, but…well, he’s not…not _bad._ Don’t you think so?”

“He’s growing on me,” Talia says, and she has to work hard to not show the pang in her chest when Peter huffs in relief, a small, thrilled smile sneaking across his face. “Honestly, they’re all growing on me, even if that’s just asking for more trouble.”

“Well, I do think this latest idea of theirs is a good one,” Peter says. He walks with her into the living room where the Christmas tree he was supposed to be assembling is still lying in pieces around its box. “We keep waiting for the thing to come to us, we’re always on the defensive that way. I don’t think we’re ever going to figure out its weakness like that.”

Talia doesn’t answer him. She takes her arm off his shoulders and bends down to pick up a pair of branches, and then starts to fan out the twigs. Then she lowers the branch as he edges over to her, looking concerned.

“No, I agree,” Talia sighs. “And there’s no risk-free way to win a fight, and Lydia seems to know what she’s doing. I just…I don’t know.”

Peter starts to ask something, then cocks his head instead. He sidles a little closer. “Are you…are you worried about what she’s doing, or about _her_?”

“Trying to matchmake now that you’ve got someone?” Talia says, amused. Then she looks back down at her branch. “I think it’s still a little early for that, Peter. Mark wasn’t that long ago.”

“You mean he didn’t die that long ago, but I think you two were done a long time before that,” Peter says. “Come on, I wasn’t there but I know you. The moment you think somebody isn’t totally committed to pack, you’re done with them.”

“Well, it’s not that anyway, even if I was…even if I had a spare second to think about things like that,” Talia mutters. She finishes fanning out the branch, and then puts it aside with a sigh. “It’s more that I just…I just have this feeling that—”

“That this is going to go wrong?” Peter guesses.

“No, not that, exactly. That…just that this isn’t going to be as simple as she thinks,” Talia finally says. “That we just aren’t ready.”

Peter makes an acknowledging noise, but then he’s silent, working with her to put together the tree. They get all the branches spread, and have jammed the center pole into its stand—Talia would like to know why werewolf strength and magic can’t stop Christmas tree stands from being crooked—and she’s just starting to hand Peter the branches to stick into the pole when he clears his throat.

“Well, are we ever going to be ready?” he says quietly. “We can’t…we can’t just keep hiding. The kids will go stir-crazy— _I’ll_ go stir-crazy, and you…and we’re so close to just getting out of this, you know.”

“I know. And no, probably not. God knows I don’t think even if I’d jumped here like a time-traveler, I’d be ready for everything that’s happened,” Talia says. “And no, Peter, I’m not raising us like this. That thing is in our woods and our house, and even if we don’t even _want_ that damned house, it’s still ours.”

Peter flicks a branch up to cover his smile. “That’s better. That’s more like you.”

“I hope so,” Talia says, shaking her head. “Because God knows, I’ve got to be better to get us through this.”

“Well, it’s not _just_ you,” Peter says. He looks at her across the half-tree, and then ducks his head, but not before she sees the determination under his embarrassment. “We’re pack. We’ll do it.”

Talia smiles at him. He knows she’s doing that, he’s keeping his head down to avoid it even though that means he scratches his cheeks and chin on the branches a few times. Her brother, she thinks. And yes, her pack. She’s not quite sure when things shifted, but they have, and…and no matter what happens, she’s glad they have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lydia's abilities in this story don't match up precisely to canon, but I'm pulling on banshee folklore and also positing that she trained up across timelines and so has much better control.
> 
> To be really nitpicky, the original understanding of the term séance technically doesn't require somebody to channel a spirit, it just refers to any meeting during which you try to contact the dead, but the popular understanding of it (shaped by the Spiritualism movement) is that a medium has to channel the spirit in order to enable it to speak. So if Lydia's just talking to the spirit but not letting it possess her, that doesn't really fit into that conception of a séance.


	6. Chapter 6

Normally it’s a bad idea to get in touch with potentially angry spirits in the same place where you live. Scott leaves all that stuff up to Stiles and Lydia, but even he knows that.

So they try Deaton’s clinic first, since it’s conveniently located on a ley line, but nothing happens. Just to check, Lydia and Talia drive out to the edge of the preserve and idle the car there just long enough for Lydia to confirm she can actually pick up an unidentified negative energy somewhere in the woods, but it’s a bad idea to talk to an angry spirit where it’s proven to be strong, too, so as soon as Lydia gets that, Talia floors the accelerator out of there. Lydia grumbles a little bit about a missed opportunity and overbearing alphas, but Stiles takes her aside and points out that a car is a terrible place to handle something with some degree of telekinesis.

They all sit down and talk it over, a lot, but ultimately, they don’t really have any choice. If they can’t do it at the preserve or at the Hale house, then they’ll have to do it at the rental.

Still, they take as many precautions as possible. Stiles and Deaton spend an entire day redoing every single ward from scratch, to the point that Stiles ends up sleeping twelve straight hours afterward—to Peter’s mild panic—while Scott and Chris and Talia sweep through town to make sure there aren’t any random hunters or omegas or anything else that could interrupt. They move the cars out of the garage and to a parking structure half a mile away so they can shift all the things out of the basement. And with Lydia down there and the kids in the bedroom with Scott and Chris, they’ve got the most vulnerable people as far away as they can.

“I wanna see Mommy,” Laura pouts, her arms crossed in front of her, standing on the bed in front of Scott. “She should be up by now.”

“She’s not gone, she’s still here,” Scott says, darting a glance at where Chris is trying to distract Derek and Cora with one of Stiles’ fantasy novels. “You can hear her heartbeat, can’t you?”

Laura isn’t deterred. She stamps her foot hard enough that the whole bed shakes, and she fumbles a little before Scott can reach out and steady her. “I want Mom!”

Chris is actually not bad with the bedtime stories. He can’t make them up, but as long as he has a book to read from, he does fine. The kids seem to be used to constantly asking questions about whether a monster is real and if so, whether it or Godzilla would win a fight, and he has a very deadpan way of answering them that they seem to take for patience. But even so, he can’t keep Derek’s attention after Laura yells.

He barely manages to pick up Cora as she starts to fuss, bouncing her awkwardly in one arm as he tries and fails to keep Derek from climbing up onto the bed. “Derek, come on, don’t bother Scott,” he says.

“But where’s Mom?” Derek says, looking between them. “And uncle Peter, where’s Peter? He always tells me all the things Laura doesn’t get to know before I go to bed.”

Laura narrows her eyes at her brother, and for a moment Scott thinks they might be saved by sibling rivalry. But…no, Laura swings back and glowers at Scott. “You’re keeping me from my mom,” she snaps. “She’s not going to like that. Dad tried to do that and Mom made him go away _forever_.”

“What?” Chris says. Then he hisses and ducks his head, shooting Scott an apologetic look.

But Laura’s already turned around to answer him. “I said Dad tried to keep us away,” she says, very matter-of-factly. “Dad was mean to us. He told us Mom was being bad, and not letting us build pack like we should, and then he was saying if we went with him, we’d find the rest of our pack and then she’d _have_ to come. But she came in and she heard him, and she yelled at him.”

Derek sits down, abrupt enough to catch Scott’s eye, and starts picking at his toes. “I didn’t like Dad either,” he says under his breath. “He looked at Laura funny.”

“I think Cora needs a diaper change,” Chris says, very stiffly and a little too loud, even if he’s trying to get their attention. “Do you want to tell me—”

“When was this?” Scott says. He…is pretty sure that Talia will have problems with him prying into her family life like this, even if the kids volunteered the information. And normally he’d have problems with it too, but something about what they’re saying—it reminds him of something, something that he knows is important, and even if he can’t place it, at this point he knows he can’t just leave that kind of feeling alone.

“He does that all the time,” Laura says. She’s suddenly wary, glancing between Scott and her brother, but her obvious interest at having an interested listener eventually outweighs that. “He comes and he tries to get us to go with him.”

Chris has given up on the distractions and come over to the bed, sitting on the edge with Cora. “When was this?” he says, and then he looks at Scott. “They’re talking about him like he’s still—”

“When he’s at the window,” Derek says. He looks up at Scott, and then starts to bend down towards his feet again. But then he frowns and twists sideways, and he—

Derek’s mouth drops into a slack ‘o’ and his eyes are just as round and wide, and his face blanches into pure terror. Scott’s already lunging for him, shifting his body into Derek’s line of sight and between him and whatever it is, but then Laura screams and rams into Scott’s chest, throwing him off.

He still lands between the children and the window, but Laura’s weighty enough to make him roll onto his back. Scott grabs at her to keep her from falling over him, then twists his head around just in time to see something flick from the window.

“It was that thing!” Chris snarls. He’s on his feet, Cora dropped to the bed and caged protectively by his arms as he leans over her and stares at the window. “It looked in and it had goddamn _eyes_ , Scott—”

Lydia screams.

Her banshee wail. It’s an endless, inhumanly high sound, something that goes through the body like a hot knife through butter and just—time always seems to freeze when she screams like that, freeze and shatter at the same time, memories spilling up into Scott’s brain as his muscles turn to ice. And all those memories are of deaths.

Then it’s over, and Scott is knotted up into fetal position around two shivering, whimpering kids, while Chris is doing the same around Cora. Scott unwinds himself as quickly as he can without hurting them, then checks them over to make sure they’re okay. There’s nothing in the world that can buffer against a banshee scream, but they’re far enough away that the kids are just dazed and afraid, not physically hurt. He checks their ears, sniffing at each, but doesn’t smell blood or worse.

Once he’s sure they’re all right, Scott pushes Derek and Laura into Chris and then rolls off the bed and scrambles for the door. He gets that open and clatters down the stairs, and hits the first floor just as the basement door slams open. Stiles and Talia spill out of it, and Stiles narrowly misses setting off a ward under Scott’s feet before he recognizes Scott.

“Kids?” Stiles pants. His voice sounds odd, tinny but too loud at the same time.

“Okay,” Scott says. He presses his hand against his left ear and swallows, then grimaces as there’s a spark of pain deep in the middle of his head: his inner ear healing. “Did—”

“No, no, nobody here, nobody _now_ ,” Stiles says. He grabs at the jamb and hangs from his grip, struggling to breathe, as Talia pushes past him and stalks into the kitchen. “Lydia got it, but—but he was keeping her off with—feeding her with memories, just like me, and then he tried something so she had to scare him—”

“He?” Scott says, and then suddenly he remembers the conversation he’d been having with the kids. And remembers where else he’d heard—“Stiles, the kids, that memory you got of somebody asking them to go with them, they said, I think it’s—”

The back door bangs open. Stiles and Scott run over—Peter’s coming up the basement stairs now, but Scott shoves him back without a second’s thought—and they’re just in time to see Talia framed in the doorway, her shifted-out silhouette nearly touching both sides.

Then she steps into the backyard, and beyond her, at the edge where the treeline starts, Scott sees movement.

“Mark?” Talia says.

And two burning eyes, dull red like half-dried blood. Then the head twists and it’s still a dark, shadowy thing, but the way it _moves_ is alive, has a weight to it now. It’s not flickering anymore.

“Mark!” Talia snarls.

She takes another step, and then Scott gets out the door and tackles her. He’s not trying to pick a fight, just trying to knock her out of her rage, so he jumps clear as soon as he feels her balance tip. He swings around and checks the treeline, but the thing is gone. And then he swings back, shifting out and growling as Talia pushes back up onto her feet.

“Talia!” Peter shouts from the doorway.

He catches her mid-snarl. Scott can hear the hitch in Talia’s voice and he eases back on his stance and growl, trying to move towards defensive without looking like he’s surrendering. She wavers a little longer, then straightens up again.

“Talia, wait—” Peter shouts again. Stiles is at his elbow, trying to hold onto him. “Talia—”

“Mom!” Laura calls.

Talia stiffens, and then she shifts human. She wheels around and glares at the woods, but her arm is coming up to cover her newly-shredded shirt, and Scott can smell the anger fading from her scent—and the rise of her fear. She stares at the woods for a second longer, then slowly walks backward into the house, where she picks up her daughter and the two of them just bury their faces in each other’s necks.

“So they really were seeing their dad this whole time,” Scott says, coming back too.

Stiles looks grim. “Yeah,” he says. He tugs Scott in by the arm, then shuts the door behind him. “Yeah. Explains how he could cross the wards sometimes. They’re keyed to blood, and the kids are half-his.”

“I took care of him,” Talia says, her voice so edged that it’s shivering like metal under straining, threatening to shatter at any second. “I don’t understand. I did everything—”

“You said you caught him trying to do that spell,” Peter says suddenly. “ _When_ did you catch him? Did you catch him before or after?”

Talia breathes in sharply, then pulls her head up from her daughter. She’s briefly distracted as Chris hesitantly comes up with Derek and Cora; she doesn’t bother yelling at him for not keeping hold of Laura, just gives both children a quick cheek-rub and purr. And then she stares at the far wall with glassy eyes.

“Spell?” Stiles says quietly to Peter.

Who presses his lips together and just nods at Talia. “When I said he was trying to threaten me and the children,” she says slowly. “He wanted to make himself alpha, in any way possible. Including black magic.”

“You should have said that.” Lydia’s come up from the basement, half-supported by Deaton. Her hair is hanging in straggling twists about her pale, sweat-slicked face, and her lips are bloody where she’s bitten through them in at least two places.

“I didn’t think, I’d killed him and—” Talia stops herself. “No, I should have. Well, I’ll tell you now. And then you tell me how to get rid of him.”

* * *

Stiles takes notes while Talia tells him everything she can remember about what she saw in Mark’s motel room, and then he holes up in the basement for the next fifteen hours with his laptop and every single magical reference in the house. Peter or Scott periodically go down to drop off food and water; Peter also tries to help for the first three hours, but comes back up muttering about it just being too _quiet_. Apparently, when Stiles is that deep into research, he no longer talks.

Eventually Scott goes out to patrol and takes Chris with him. The house is still quite full without them, but it’s eerily subdued. Lydia’s still recovering in an upstairs bedroom with Deaton helping her, and the children have barely spoken, despite Talia’s attempts to distract them with television and then allowing them to open a gift each. They liked the presents—Laura insisted on putting the matching bows on Cora and her toy rabbit, and Derek’s been inseparable from the stuffed wolf Stiles got him—but they said thank you and gave Talia a smile, and then they went right back to huddling together on the couch.

They won’t let Talia or Peter out of their sight either, though Peter’s short-tempered and mostly responding in growls, when he isn’t just ignoring the kids. Talia wants to tell him to stop taking it out on them, but she doesn’t quite trust her temper either, and now is not the time to be arguing with each other.

“We might as well go back to bed,” Peter mutters, though he doesn’t move from his position, flopped into the armchair where he can see the basement door.

Derek whimpers, and when Peter glances over, Derek ducks behind Talia’s back and then peeps warily out at him. “I don’t want to go back up there, Mom,” Derek whispers. “He’s gonna be back.”

“He’s not going to—goddamn it,” Talia says, dropping her face into her hand. She can rage all she wants, but that doesn’t make her words any less of a lie.

“Mom?” Laura says, voice quavering on the edge of a sob. “Mommy?”

“Laura, I—look, just…just…” Talia mutters. Terrible mother, she’s a terrible mother, and a terrible alpha, and she just—

“Mom said a bad word,” Peter says dryly.

Talia jerks her head up, her throat tightening in preparation to snarl, and then she sees that Peter’s not amused, or even sarcastic. He’s watching her, as wary as the kids, and even though he then goes ahead and pulls himself up, swinging his legs over so he’s facing the couch, he’s not doing it because he feels comfortable enough to be casual. He’s got bravado stiffening his shoulders, holding his head rigidly up as he beckons to Laura and Derek.

“Come on, get off the couch,” he says. A little impatience is leaking into his voice, but he’s clearly controlling himself. “You have to do that, and then we’ll pull it out and just…just, I don’t know, have a slumber party down here. I’ll…we probably have popcorn somewhere, I smelled it a couple nights ago.”

“Right. Lydia keeps some for her movie nights,” Talia says dully.

She watches her children slowly climb off the couch and go over to Peter, giving her uncertain looks over her shoulder. Talia closes her eyes, then makes herself open them. Makes herself get up, and get her youngest from the corner of the couch, and then hand Cora off to Peter. And then makes herself go into the kitchen and pop some damn popcorn.

When she brings out the bowl, Peter has the couch bed unfolded and has climbed onto it with the kids. They don’t have a blanket, just the thin sheet that comes with the bed, but he’s taken off his over-shirt and now that’s wadded around Cora, while Derek and Laura are snuggled into either side of him, their small forms barely visible behind their wolf and rabbit, respectively.

Talia gives him the popcorn and then goes to get a blanket. That takes a little longer than planned, since Deaton comes out of Lydia’s bedroom when he hears Talia, and they talk briefly about some shopping that Lydia wants done in the morning. Deaton’s improved since their first meeting—he still shows that he’s very much on new, unsteady ground, but he’s adapting reasonably quickly, and more importantly, seems willing to adapt. She wouldn’t say that he’s made a case for being pack yet, since she’s still not sure how much of an independent agenda he has driving him, but she appreciates how far he’s come.

When Talia finally returns to the first floor, the children have dozed off but Peter’s still awake. He’s turned the TV on mute but left it on, so Bugs Bunny is chasing a hairy red monster around a haunted castle as Talia fluffs the blanket out over him and the kids. She hesitates, then sits down on the edge of the bed.

“You know, I wouldn’t have pegged him for any good with magic,” Peter says, after a few minutes of silence have gone by. “Let alone something like that. He just seemed very…not that subtle.”

“I don’t know that I’d call necromancy subtle,” Talia says. She knows he’s trying to make her feel better. She’s not ungrateful—on the contrary, she’s so grateful she’s irrationally angry with him for it, and is trying very hard to keep that out of her voice.

“Look, I’m just saying,” Peter says. His voice rises a little with irritation—he never misses when she’s hiding something, and rarely is wrong about what that is—and then he grimaces, checking on Cora as she burbles in her sleep. Then he looks over at Talia. “I didn’t think to tell them either. It’s not like we decided they were trustworthy till just recently, and besides, this kind of magic—Stiles has been down there for what, five hours now? He’s still trying to figure out how Mark did it. So obviously this isn’t just—you’re not the only one who missed it.”

“I know. I know that, Peter, I just—” Talia breaks off and moves her legs onto the couch bed so she can thump her head against the couch back. She hears Derek’s heartbeat flutter and she freezes, hoping…he wheezes a little, and then his pulse slows again into sleep, and she lets out the breath she was holding. “Peter, I knew him for almost ten years. A _decade_. A decade, we were together, we lived together, shared everything, raised a family, and…I left our _parents_ for him.”

They sit in silence. Peter shifts around, then lifts the remote. He takes the TV off mute, but keeps his arm up, and then puts it back on after a few seconds. Then he sighs.

“Werewolf lifespan,” he finally offers, very soft, very hesitant. “And once we get the rest of the family straightened out, we’ll be…it just might not be that much time compared to the rest of our lives. Cora probably won’t remember this at all, and Derek and Laura have plenty of time to get over it.”

“I know,” Talia says, staring at the ceiling. “But…and I’m not just an alpha, I’m the alpha now, Peter. I couldn’t afford that kind of screw-up before, and now…”

“I don’t think he went into it planning to end up some…murdering shadow thing,” Peter says. When she looks over, he’s not looking at her, he’s looking at where his fingers are fidgeting with the plastic claws on Derek’s wolf toy. “He wasn’t _that_ stupid. And—” Peter pauses as Talia lets out a dry chuckle, glancing at her “—and I didn’t like him but even I…I did think he cared about you, at least a little. He stood up to Dad when you brought him home, that first time.”

Talia had actually forgotten about that. And now, pulling up the memory, that time seems as strange and distant as the cartoon world on the TV, all flat and lifeless. But yes, she thinks. Peter’s right. That happened, too.

“And I guess if nothing else, it did get you away from our parents,” Peter adds after a second. He frowns at his hands, then looks over at Talia. “Can you imagine what you’d have been like if you’d stayed?”

“With Dad telling me all the time that it’s a damn good thing I got full-shift, since I turned out a girl, and reminding Mom you were _her_ accident every time you did something he didn’t like?” Talia says. She and Peter smile bitterly at each other, and then Talia looks down at her children, who she still hopes will do better than that. She and her brother turned out decently in spite of everything, but it just shouldn’t be that hard, even for werewolves. “We probably would’ve started killing each other a lot earlier.”

“Well, I’m glad we didn’t,” Peter says. He’s trying to be ironic, but his voice is a little too brittle for that.

Talia nods, and then turns over so that she’s curling towards him and the children. “Yeah,” she says, folding her arm over them. She moves it so Peter can tug up the blanket, and then pets his side as he tucks himself down with the kids to go to sleep. “Me too.”

* * *

“Okay, this is what happened, near as I can tell,” Stiles says. “That wasn’t Mark’s first sacrifice. It was probably his second, because if it’d been higher than that, you should’ve noticed some alpha traits when you killed him.”

Talia shakes her head. She doesn’t look like she had much of a good night’s rest, with bloodshot eyes and that smudged cast to her skin that you get when you’ve been sleeping in your clothes, but she at least seems more focused, less blindly vengeful now. “I didn’t see any. He definitely wasn’t harder to kill than he should’ve been. And…I mentioned I’d thought he was having an affair. He’d be gone for long stretches and he would’ve had the time.”

“So do we need to find that first sacrifice?” Peter says.

“No, that’s…we’ll get there in a sec, okay, just let me get through this other stuff first,” Stiles says, as somebody, probably Lydia, kicks him under the table. He grimaces and sneaks his hand down to rub his shin; he wasn’t even going on that tangent, honestly. “What’s going on is Mark got powered up. Not enough to make him alpha, but enough to make him undead, even after all the precautions you took with his corpse. And I think he probably tied himself to the Hale family when he was doing the spell, so when he went alpha, he’d have an easier time taking over—”

Talia tenses and then Peter does too, putting his hands on the edge of the kitchen table as if readying himself to grab his sister. But Talia just says a single word: “Laura.”

“Yeah.” Stiles grimaces. And wonders, really, why the multiverse seems so set on always giving that girl homicidal close relatives. “So when he died, that stuck, kind of. So we’ve seen that he can draw some power from you guys, especially from dying Hales—”

“So he was the one who killed our parents?” Peter says.

As he talks, Peter’s hands tighten on the table till the wood groans. Peter’s been pretty dismissive about his parents’ death, when he’s not dropping anecdotes that make Stiles want to dig them up and punch them both, but he clearly still wants a go at whoever took them out.

Some complicated stuff there, and Stiles wishes he had the time to work it out, but he’s got a lot of information to deliver and a Hale alpha boring holes into his mind with her eyes for it. But he does slip his hand back under the table and rest it on Peter’s thigh. Which tenses, then relaxes, and then Peter drops one hand to grab Stiles’ wrist.

“Yeah, though…we didn’t check at the time, because we were so busy with the de facto hunter convention we were hosting, but Lydia and I went through some of the stuff we took off the hunters again,” Stiles says. He catches Chris pricking to attention and nods at him. “We kept back their phones, guns. You know, whatever you need for framing other hunters for murder.”

Chris blinks twice. “Huh. That’s probably easier than trying to use our old lawyers.”

“True, but…hold that one, Lydia’s gonna want contact info,” Stiles says, just in time to avoid another kick from her. “Anyway. We found some texts that sound like the hunters found parts of a _third_ body, but it looked like an omega, so they figured your parents were on border patrol, killed the omega and then got jumped, and they didn’t pay the third body any attention.”

“They could’ve also thought that that one was with me,” Chris says. “Dad wouldn’t have passed on that I’d killed the alpha who bit me, so they might’ve thought I’d actually gone over to that pack.”

“Point,” Stiles says. “Anyway, I’m guessing that that was actually Mark in a puppet body—that’s why we don’t need to look for his first sacrifice, that was probably them—trying to get ahead of you, but your parents at least ripped him up so bad he hasn’t been able to get another body since.”

Talia…takes the suggestion that she might’ve led Mark to her parents pretty well, with just a quick flare of red in her eyes. Stiles isn’t trying to guilt her—he’d be a massive, massive hypocrite, considering similar fuck-ups he’s had—but in his experience, it’s better to just get all the potential hot buttons out up front. She’s going to have to deal with guilt no matter what, and better now than when she’s fighting Mark.

“But he’s trying to,” Talia finally says. “He’s been trying to kill us off so he’s strong enough to possess somebody new, and he’s been after the kids for one of them.”

Stiles nods. “I know, and so…here’s where we get to how to kill him for good. We have to give him a body.”

Peter’s still got Stiles’ hand and Stiles realizes that because Peter damn near breaks his fingers, suddenly clamping down on it. And then Peter lets go and grabs the table again, half-rising as Talia’s eyes go fully red.

“He’s not saying—” Peter starts, and then he jerks around to look at Stiles. “You’re not—”

“No, and I literally wrote a note to myself to lead with that, in all caps at the top of my notepad, but I didn’t and I’m really sorry about freaking you out, and I…I’ve been up a while, my fail,” Stiles sighs. He rubs at the side of his forehead, then moves his arm out of the way as Peter sits back down next to him. And then can’t help a grateful noise as Peter hands him his coffee. “Where was…right, I don’t mean use the kids. Absolutely not.”

“As thankful as I am to hear we aren’t using my children as bait, I still don’t like the sound of this,” Talia says. Pretty calmly. Eyes brown again. “He’s capable of damage as he is.”

“I know, but the thing is, he’s undead and that’s not the same as being restless dead, or else we could just exorcise him like a regular ghost. He’s a little alive, which is another reason why the wards are having trouble keeping him out, because he doesn’t fit into…anyway, bottom line, we need to fit him into a category that’s simpler to deal with,” Stiles says. “So, going with that folklore you all mentioned before—”

Chris makes a startled noise. When they all look at him, he hunches slightly against the counter, glancing to the side and then grimacing when he just sees more counter—Scott’s already been briefed so he can skip and watch the kids—and then he lifts his head again. “You’re serious?” he says. “The solution is to make him a vampire?”

“Look, technically, he already is one. We’re just making him one that’s easy to destroy,” Stiles says irritably. Then he catches Lydia looking at him and raises his hand. “Well. Relative to our other choices, which all involve me powering up using the Nemeton or worse, and then we’ll be spending the rest of our lives dealing with the fallout, all right? If we can pull this off, then the worst we’ll be facing is a lot of psychological trauma, and maybe a lifelong phobia of vamp movies, and I’m the only one who likes those anyway.”

“Where are we getting a body?” Talia says.

“Well, he likes Hales and since we didn’t have the alibi totally set up to dump him yet…Uncle Carlo’s still on ice in the basement of Deaton’s clinic,” Stiles says, watching her closely.

And Peter, but mostly Talia. Peter starts and twists around to look at Stiles, eyes wide and shocked, and even from a side view, he’s so…Stiles has to remind himself the hurt-comfort comes after the strategy session. But Talia is just stone cold. It’s not because she’s in shock either; her eyes are focused and thoughtful, she’s following everything that he’s saying and weighing it up. She’s just that ready to go there.

“He’s a good choice for other reasons, too,” Lydia says. She’s also watching Talia, and Stiles can tell that Lydia’s noticed the grimness too. “His chest is already broken in, you’d just need to pry the ribs apart.”

Talia’s brows draw down. “Why—”

“We’re not going stakes and garlic and ultraviolet light with this version,” Stiles explains. “We pop Mark into the Carlo-suit, Mark wakes up, and then you have to pull his heart out. And it’s gotta be you, sorry, he’s angriest at you. Then we burn the heart, mix the ashes with a little water, and you all take a sip.”

“That’s for the kind of vampires who are tied to family,” Peter says under his breath. “For the ones who—”

“No, I remember now. That kind almost never comes up anymore,” Talia says slowly. She presses her lips together once, then nods. “How soon can we do it?”

“Another day,” Stiles says. “We’re both—well, it’s calling up the dead so Lydia will be point on this one, not me, but we’re both still wiped.”

“And Deaton does need to open his clinic and handle some business, so he’ll be clear to host us,” Lydia says. “We’re assuming you agree we shouldn’t try it here again.”

Talia snorts, then pushes back from the table and gets up. “I do agree. Good, then it’s set.”

Stiles opens his mouth. She pauses and looks at him, but he has a pretty clear idea that if it’s not a detail about getting rid of Mark, she’s not interested. So he shuts his mouth and she walks out of the kitchen.

Lydia gets up and leaves too, muttering that she’ll give Deaton a call and spare Stiles the trouble. She doesn’t cut too close or do anything intimidating, but Chris hikes himself up against the counter as she passes him, and then he gives Stiles an odd look.

“Is she…” he starts.

Stiles slouches in his seat and looks at his notepad, in which he spent the last solid hour writing and rewriting his notes so he could do this without any issues, and which was an hour he now thinks he could’ve spent on getting food. Or a shower. Or some other attempt to feel human. “Chris, whatever magic Scott’s been working on you, you are _still_ not up for Lydia. Just trust me on that one.”

“Well, I wasn’t…never mind,” Chris says. He glances at the ceiling, then moves towards the hall. “If we’re done, Scott and I can probably fit in that trip to the supermarket today instead of waiting till tomorrow.”

Stiles shrugs and waves him on. Chris takes a step into the hall, then backs up as Scott comes into the kitchen. “Lyds?” Scott says.

“Talking to Deaton, and I’m not a total asshole so maybe you want to make a courtesy call after shopping, hold his hand, make sure he’s not feeling too queasy,” Stiles says. “I mean that in all seriousness, he needs to be okay and she’s…yeah.”

Scott grimaces and tilts his head, running one hand through his hair. He’s listening for where Lydia is; Stiles lets his buddy do that and debate it and then come to the expected conclusion that poking the intentionally lying-low Lydia would result in even more damage. 

“Okay,” he mutters, giving Stiles a look. And then he turns to Chris, who is unreasonably excited for this shopping trip under that poker face. “Okay, well…you want to drive this time?”

Chris and him trot out the door and that shuts and Peter promptly buries a perfect little one-act play of a sneeze in his hand. He rubs his nose with pinched fingers for a couple seconds, then tilts so that his shoulder’s brushing Stiles. “Should we offer them some of your scent maskers?”

“Scott knows where they are, he’s just too used to us being rude and not using them and making him pretend it’s not happening, he forgets our manners aren’t the rest of the world’s manners.” Stiles picks up his notepad, then tilts it to knock the bottom against the table, pushing in a few loose leaves. Then he smacks that against his chest and sags in his seat, letting out a long, long sigh. “Man. This is gonna be a show. Your sister all right with it?”

Peter looks annoyed that his jibe at Scott and Chris didn’t get more appreciation, because he’s a sarcastic little teenager, but behind that he’s nervous. He shrugs stiffly and swings his knee to prod at Stiles’ leg, and then he just gives up on subtle, if he was ever trying, and hauls his chair around so that he’s basically straddling it and the remaining free sliver of Stiles’ seat.

“Are _you_?” Peter says, peering at him. “Because I still don’t trust Deaton with something like that, and even if she’s your friend, Lydia—”

“Lydia will be okay, she’s a pro at this sort of thing,” Stiles says.

He’s a little quick. And sharp. And Peter flinches back, openly hurt, before his face just shutters up tighter than if it’d been sealed with blessed pitch. “I know, you’ve seen _all_ this before.”

Stiles starts to sigh, then stops himself and just reaches over and puts his hand on Peter’s shoulder. Peter jerks from him and that hurts a lot more than it looks, just like papercuts under the nail, but Stiles hangs on till Peter finally gives him a look. It’s a diffident one trying to cover up other things, but at least Peter’s meeting his eyes.

“Yeah, and no, and we fuck shit up, you’ve seen that,” Stiles says. “Look, Lyds is…she’s got problems just like I do, but I don’t even think I trust her. I just do. I trust her like I breathe, and she’s…she’ll take care of things. I don’t think she will, I don’t know she will, she just _will_.”

“You say that, and I get it. I _am_ a werewolf,” Peter says after a moment. He eyes Stiles a little longer, then heaves up his shoulders in a stiff breath and suddenly those shutters are gone and he’s wide open, hope and fear and worry all colliding in his eyes. “It’s just Talia’s my _sister_ , and everything we’ve already been through…and Mark’s not taking her down. He can’t. He was always just an insecure asshole, and he just—never was good enough, never would’ve been. So he just—he can’t win. He can’t.”

“I know. And he won’t. I’m not gonna say believe me or trust me, but just…he won’t.” Stiles squeezes Peter’s shoulder, then starts to lift his hand. He feels Peter rise up with it, stops, and then goes for it and slips his hand in between Peter’s arm and side to hook Peter over.

He honestly just is going for a…a hug, something like that, but Peter makes this little gasping noise and ducks his head and Stiles gets a glimpse of shaky blue eyes and they end making out some. Peter half-sprawled across Stiles’ lap, his arm slung around Stiles’ neck for balance, kissing like Stiles is _his_ breath. And then he pulls out of it and tips his head and curls himself around to press his face into the crook of Stiles’ neck.

“Talia’s…she’s kicking herself over that asshole,” Peter says softly. His lashes dust against Stiles’ skin as Stiles lifts one hand and rubs at the side of his throat. “I think she even hates herself a little. But I think—I think she can handle him. She did once already, and she’s even madder at him now. And we’re not just throwing her in there with Carlo’s body—”

“Oh, hell no, we’ll chain that shit down and everything,” Stiles says. “And Lyds will be there, and you _can_ trust me on this one, if you’re dealing with an undead sexist creep who likes fucking up women, Lydia is absolutely on top of it.”

Peter laughs a little, his hand crumpling down Stiles’ front before it settles to grip the shirt fabric by Stiles’ waist. “I can see that. Also, that sounds like timeline stuff—and while I normally _would_ ask, you also were in the basement for fifteen hours.”

Stiles makes a face. “Yeah, I know, I reek and—”

“Just tell me that you’re going to stay out of it for a little while,” Peter mutters. “Just so we all know you’re not—you’re not growing into the floor or something.”

He shivers a little, when Stiles strokes a thumb up and down his nape, shivers and it’s not lust or submission or anything like that. Then he tucks his head back down and Stiles feels more than hears the little, short, stuttering purr that comes out of him.

“I was thinking shower, then nap,” Stiles says. “Want to come with?”

Peter lifts his head and offers Stiles a shaky, but definitely teasing, smile. “My sister is going to be right next door.”

“So I’ll be all old-school chivalrous and sleep on the floor,” Stiles says, rolling his eyes.

Which he doesn’t do, and not because of the obvious fact that Peter kind of doesn’t remotely have maidenly honor now. Because by the time he stumbles out of the shower, so tired he barely remembers to pull his head through the shirt collar and not one of the arm-holes, Peter’s already fallen asleep on the bed. And Stiles looks down at him and has about half a second to think ‘adorable,’ looking at the way Peter’s nosed out the one pillow Stiles uses over Lydia’s three, before he just curls up around Peter and is out before his body even finishes settling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The vampire cure mentioned is drawn from real folklore (see [Mercy Brown](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercy_Brown_vampire_incident)). One possible real-life source for vampire legends is tuberculosis, which before the days of antibiotics, seemed to "haunt" families as one by one, they wasted away and died. Of course, the real reason is that tuberculosis is highly contagious and people infected each other as they tended to their sick family members.
> 
> So Talia did not tell Stiles, Scott and Lydia all the specifics of what went down between her and Mark, because she didn't fully trust them at the time, and she didn't think to update them once she did because she's not that well-versed in magic. Peter is more knowledgeable, but at eighteen (and having had to sneak around his father to learn), he's not a whiz at it yet; it's more of a fun hobby to him. Also, he wasn't focusing on studying the same types of magic that Mark was.


	7. Chapter 7

Scott hates dead bodies.

He still does. He’s used to them now, to bodies in all kinds of terrible conditions, but he just…can’t make himself be okay with them. Stiles cracks jokes and Lydia comments about any kind of inexpertise she sees with them, from clothes to killing blows, but Scott just does whatever he needs to do with them, as quick as he can, and then he goes and gives his hands a good scrubbing.

“Do you need another bottle?” Chris says from the doorway.

“What?” Scott says, and then he looks at the thin pink film that’s all that’s left of the soap in the bottle he has. He grimaces and puts that aside, making a note to leave Deaton a little extra cash to cover for it. “No, I’m fine.”

Chris isn’t stupid, and he cocks his head, clearly skeptical, but he doesn’t ask. Just stands there, and when Scott finally steps back from the sink, shaking off his fingers, he holds out a towel.

“The bolts are all good and tight, I hauled on each of them and didn’t feel any give,” Chris says. He hesitates as Lydia’s voice echoes through the clinic and into their room, then takes another step inside. “Then again, I’m no alpha, and even dead that guy looks like a bruiser.”

“Well, Lydia always tells me it’s where you put the lever, not how much force you use…and I guess you’d already know about that,” Scott says, drying off his hands.

Lydia’s voice rises again, snapping at Deaton to move something, and Chris glances over his shoulder. Then he looks back at Scott. He’s working his lips, trying not to ask, before he gives his shoulders an abrupt roll. “You probably should look over it anyway, but…maybe give her a couple minutes.”

“Yeah,” Scott mutters. He wishes that Stiles wasn’t still at the house, but if Lydia’s here doing the ritual, then Stiles is the obvious choice to watch over the children.

Stiles had said he’d talk to Lydia beforehand, and since Scott hasn’t gotten any warning texts, he assumes that that happened, but honestly, Scott can’t tell. Lydia’s been edgy since they started, checking and rechecking things till even Deaton looked as if he wanted to tell her that she’s actually smearing the sigils by touching them up so much. There only haven’t been any fights because Talia and Peter are still at the house, and much as Scott hates dealing with corpses, at least chaining up Carlo’s body gave him and Chris a reason to avoid Lydia.

Peter won’t be coming. He wanted to, but even if they didn’t all agree that at least two people needed to stay with the kids, Derek and Laura had somehow figured out all the adults were leaving to do something dangerous. Laura had screamed and screamed, no matter what Talia did, and Derek hadn’t said a thing, had just lunged for Peter’s leg and locked himself so tightly around it that they would’ve had to hurt him to pry him off, and in the end Peter had barely protested about staying behind. He does have Stiles for company, but Scott honestly thinks it was more Peter being unnerved by the sheer determination Derek had to keep at least one of them around.

Talia, on the other hand, will be here any minute, and they already are walking a high-wire act. They don’t need her and Lydia scrapping with each other.

“I could…I could maybe ask Lydia if she thinks the outer circle is lopsided,” Chris offers. Reluctantly, hesitating even as he steps back towards the door like he’ll do it right now. “Get her to the other side of this place.”

He slumps a little in relief when Scott shakes his head. “No, I just—checking the chains isn’t going to take more than a couple minutes, I’ll talk to Lydia first and then do that,” Scott mutters. “Honestly, we’re about to raise the dead, do you want to go into that as your second fight of the night?” 

“Well, no, but I’ve been hunting since I could walk, I know you usually don’t get to pick your order,” Chris says dryly.

Scott laughs a little, dropping the damp towel over the side of the sink. He starts towards the door and Chris moves over, and then blinks as Scott stops in front of him. “Hey,” Scott says. “You know when you said you wanted to show me more than vendettas, it doesn’t mean you have to just—put up with anything. I love Lydia, but she’s a _lot_ , and that’s when she’s—she’s not like this. Which she isn’t, not all the time.”

Chris’ mouth twists bitterly, and for a second Scott thinks he’s tried for reassuring and instead ended up hitting a sore spot. For all that Chris thinks being nice is a good thing, and is impressive, Scott could tell him about a thousand times that Scott’s been nice and just made things worse. It’s trickier than it looks and he still doesn’t have the hang of it, isn’t sure he ever will. Sure, he’ll keep _trying_ , but he can do that without actually thinking it’ll work. He’s known that for a long time.

But then Chris grabs Scott’s arm, sharp and frantic, as if he thinks Scott might walk out on him. Scott hasn’t moved but Chris pulls himself up and drops his head at the same time, his breath gusting in a diagonal arc across Scott’s cheek and jaw as he ends up staring at Scott’s shoulder. “I don’t even want to do it for proof, I just want to do it so you don’t have to,” Chris says, voice low but intense, the words short but explosive. “You just…God, you look so good, and after my mother died I didn’t think I’d ever be able to care about that kind of thing, much less want it, and—”

His scent’s filling up with anxiety and fever, and Scott makes a rough, quelling noise before he can help himself. Chris freezes, his breath sucking back into his mouth and then even that goes away for a second, and Scott just…he reaches up with his free hand and puts that against the side of Chris’ face and tilts Chris till they’re looking at each other again. 

It’s against instinct and he can feel Chris’ chin jerk down against his thumb. Sometimes the dominance thing just _grates_ on Scott, but it’s a part of what they are, and he…he wants Chris to stop trying so hard.

He wants Chris to just…just be there, he realizes. Just be there, and it’s going to take a while and Scott feels bad about that, but it’s actually going. And if Chris is just there, just till Scott catches up…Scott moves in, presses their foreheads together. Chris stops trying to drop his head but he’s still tense, little half-bitten noises tearing out of him, so Scott pulls his chin sideways and down. Drags his own forehead along the side of Chris’ face, whiffing in the man’s scent as Chris lets out a long, low breath, fingers squeezing Scott’s arm, and then turns in to put his mouth against the side of Chris’ throat.

Chris shudders. Lets go of Scott’s arm, but then claws a grip on Scott’s shoulder instead, his pulse leaping against Scott’s lips. “Scott,” he says thickly. “Look. You don’t—not just to—I’m not that desperate—”

“Yeah.” Scott moves his head just enough so that he can talk, but his mouth is still brushing over Chris’ skin and Chris is shivering every single time. “Yeah, but I don’t just feel sorry for you, okay? Just—it’ll be a while, sorry, but just so _you_ know—”

He tips his head, presses his lips down. Chris’ weight suddenly hangs from Scott’s shoulder, but Scott was half-expecting that and he grabs Chris around the waist, holding him up as Chris whines into his ear. Eases up for a second, so he can peel his lips back, and then comes down again, with his teeth.

Chris’ whine dies away. He’s voiceless, talking with the dig of his fingers, the mad hammering of his pulse, the twist his whole body makes up into Scott before it suddenly relaxes. Scott lifts up and laps at the spot, worrying at some of the red indentations with his tongue-tip. He doesn’t taste blood—which is a good thing, he doesn’t want them to get carried away and screw it up by rushing it, but for a second a part of him, the part that bubbles up snarls whenever danger comes near _his_ pack, it’s disappointed. God, is it disappointed.

“Scott,” Chris groans. He’s rubbing his cheek against the side of Scott’s head, stubble rasping pleasantly over Scott’s ear. “God, Scott—”

And then, as Scott raises his head, Chris darts in and seizes his mouth. Fever-hot, _deep_ , not just a shock but like Chris is concentrating everything he wants into that one point, and like somehow, Scott is getting it.

Then Chris drops back. He pants a little, eyes dazed but strangely intent at the same time. “Sorry,” he rasps. “I think that’s getting ahead, but I just—just once. That’s—that’ll be all right, won’t it?”

“Yeah,” Scott says. He’s just as rough-sounding. He looks at Chris, watching nervousness lace into the haze in the man’s eyes, and then he—he puts both hands up, cups Chris’ face because he needs to keep it short, needs to keep his arms between them to make that happen, but he kisses the man.

Chris whimpers a little into his mouth, and Scott almost swings his arms out of the way. He stops that, and then takes a full step back.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. It’ll be okay. Now I just—all right, just don’t come in if you hear us yelling, it’s just Lydia. We’ve been around each other for a long time, it’s fine whatever it sounds like.”

Scott doesn’t wait to see if Chris agrees, not because he wants to be rude but because he just needs to walk off before he can’t. He’s tense for the first few paces and then he loosens up as he realizes Chris isn’t following him. And then, just to himself, he sighs.

He finds Lydia alone in the room with Carlo’s spread-eagled, chained-up body. “I don’t think the candles are even,” Lydia says without looking at him.

“If Stiles isn’t going to say it, I guess I have to,” Scott says, bracing himself. “You’re going to get Talia killed if you can’t just—”

“I’m going to?” Lydia stands with her back to him, her head slightly tilted, poised like a nocked arrow. Then, very slowly, she pivots. “ _I’m_ going to get _her_ killed? When she couldn’t just tell us her ex died in the middle of the same kind of black magic that our Peter pulled on me—”

“And you’re going to get _you_ killed too,” Scott snaps over her. “What’s eating you now isn’t what that Peter did, you’re just throwing that at me to throw me and I’m not doing it. I’m not Stiles, but I care about you, too, and the real problem is you still think Stiles and I wish you hadn’t dragged us with you. And you think all these people hate you for what you do to their lives, and damn it, Lydia, you’re not ever going to be able to stop if you don’t actually _look_ at what you’re doing.”

Her eyes widen, while the rest of her face doesn’t so much as twitch. It’s a stone face, alabaster, with a pair of furious, furiously grief-stricken eyes in the middle of it.

And Scott thinks he should be mad too. He thinks he should maybe tell Stiles that just because the pair of them have a special connection, that doesn’t mean Stiles can always just assume Lydia’s reading his mind. Doesn’t mean Stiles can just drop a sarcastic reference to their past and—well, Lydia will understand what he’s getting at, she always does, but that isn’t the same as actually _listening_ to him. Scott should be mad that he has to end up being the one to shove her.

He should be, but he’s just tired, he thinks. He hates seeing her like this even more than he hates dead bodies, because she’s alive and so he always hopes that the next timeline will just—snap her out of it. But it doesn’t, and he might’ve almost been okay with leaving Stiles in a timeline, but he’s never even considered leaving Lydia. And they’re not even really that close, even now.

“Just look,” Scott says wearily. “Just…look, please. Because we went with you because we didn’t want to lose _you_ , all right? And it can’t come to that now. Even if Stiles and I end up staying here, there’s no way in hell we’re going to let that happen.”

“It can’t,” Lydia says after a long moment. She makes it sound like a question, and like an insult.

He knows she doesn’t mean either. They’re not really best friends but God, do they know each other. “Just look,” Scott says. “Just try it, okay? You’re not a failure, Lydia. Nobody thinks you are, and I know you don’t care about what other people think of you, but just…maybe, this one time, you can hear what they have to say.”

Then he steps over to the body. He takes a second to get used to the odd, rubbery way skin looks when it’s been dead a while, and then he bends down and starts tugging on chains, testing the bolts that anchor them into the floor. She watches him for maybe half a minute, then walks around him to the candles she’d been complaining about. They work around each other till Talia shows up.

* * *

For some reason, Talia thinks she should feel more…something about seeing what’s left of her uncle. Carlo isn’t anywhere near as torn-up as her parents had been, but he’s got a line of thick black stitches marching down his sternum where Lydia and Scott sawed it open. Peter’s claws had mangled his heart so they’d had to do post-mortem reconstruction, getting it in shape so it’ll work just long enough for Mark to fully inhabit the body.

She should probably feel more about that, too. But ever since Talia had that talk with Peter on the couch, she’s just been—well, done with feeling, and with thinking. She’s done with Mark, beyond done, and now all she wants to do is make that stick and then move on.

Her kids are so traumatized, any way you look at it, and that’s awful but they’re young and they’re _Hales_ more than anything else. They’ll survive and even thrive if they get a chance, and she wants to give them one. And her brother, he’s gotten through their parents and his first kill, and now he looks like he might have found somebody who matches him, even challenges him, and she wants Peter to be happy. And then there are the people around them who are starting to edge into her pack instincts. Stiles with his magic and offhanded bitterness, Scott and Chris circling each other, and Lydia.

Lydia who’s stepping into the casting ring with Talia, on the other side of Carlo’s body. Who irks Talia more than any of the others because she’s as arrogant and determined as any alpha to make things right her way, but…the more Talia sees of her, the more Talia thinks how different from any werewolf the woman is. Alphas want to impose their will because they need others to submit to them in order to be strong in the first place, but Lydia strikes her as completely self-sufficient in that respect. Lydia does what she does not because she _needs_ anyone to bow to her, but because she doesn’t care at all whether they do or not.

At least, that’s what Talia thought up till the last few days. “Are you ready?” she says.

Lydia looks up sharply before nodding and putting both hands out over the corpse, palms-up. She’s said very little since Talia arrived, giving minimal instructions; both Deaton and Chris, who are outside of the ring with Scott, have been giving her wary looks. Scott hasn’t, but he and Lydia have barely even looked at each other, let alone spoken.

“I’m going to count to three,” Lydia says, looking at Talia as Talia takes her hands. “Then the chanting will start. It’ll go three times, then we should start to see something. But you need to look close. He’ll know what we’re trying to do, he’ll try and catch us off-guard and there’s no reason to keep him alive any longer than we have to.”

“Got it,” Talia says. It’s the third time she’s had it explained to her, but she’s forgoing annoyance in favor of just getting it started and over with.

Lydia studies her for a little longer, till Talia’s almost going to snap at Deaton to start anyway, and then she turns and counts off while looking at Deaton. When she gets to three, she jerks her head sharply. Deaton twitches, takes a deep breath—Scott walks up behind him and puts a hand on his shoulder—and starts reciting Latin from a book Stiles dug up.

Talia looks down at Carlo’s body. At first she tries to tune out everything else and just focus on that, but…but even if she doesn’t regret her uncle’s death, she doesn’t want to squat over him either while her rusty Latin picks out random phrases from Deaton’s chanting. She wanted to put Carlo behind her, too, him and Mark and her father and mother. Everyone who’s ever just…just made it impossible to be well and happy. And seeing Carlo dead doesn’t help—it should, it should remind her that she and her pack have already triumphed once but instead it just…

It makes her feel hopeless, she thinks. She doesn’t want to gloat over him. He was somebody who was pack and family, if not when he died, at other points of her life, and he wouldn’t even give her a chance to show what she can do. Instead they had to fight him off and kill him and that doesn’t really feel like it’s showing she’s stronger. It feels like it’s showing she’s never going to be enough, in other people’s eyes.

Talia’s fingers are suddenly squeezed, and hard enough that she has to work to keep from making a sound. She looks up and Lydia is glaring at her. The woman’s lips are a thin hard line, and it stays that way even when she mouths that Deaton’s on the third repetition.

Lydia’s disappointed in her, but—weirdly, it doesn’t take Talia like all the others who’ve found her lacking. Because they weren’t expecting more, but Lydia obviously _does_ , Talia realizes.

Well, if a banshee who’s only known her as a dead person in her children’s history thinks she has more—and then Talia stiffens. She nearly forgets and lets go of Lydia’s hands, and Lydia forcibly drags Talia’s hands back as Talia jerks her head down to look at Carlo’s corpse…and hear the faint, but growing, heartbeat coming from it.

Lydia squeezes Talia’s hands again, till Talia irritably looks up, and then firmly shakes her head. Deaton’s near the end of the third chant and Talia thought they said that…or maybe they have to wait for the chant to finish. But the signs weren’t supposed to come till afterward, and they’re coming earlier than that, and—Talia shakes her head, sensing the panicked tilt of her thoughts. Tells herself that whatever people think, she will do this. Her pack needs her to.

That heartbeat grows stronger and stronger. Chris shifts restlessly along the outside of the ring, crawling up so that he’s got a clear shot at Carlo’s head. Deaton’s voice is rising and he’s struggling to keep from speeding up, to the point that the strain slurs the words a little. Lydia shoots him a look and Scott catches it, and shifts so that he’s got both hands on Deaton’s shoulders. That calms the man a little, but then he reaches the end of the chant and the last word rings out with near-hysterical force.

And then there’s no heartbeat. Talia bites back a hiss—Chris doesn’t bother, letting out a confused growl—and stares down at her uncle’s corpse. She doesn’t hear anything, doesn’t smell anything except for bitter herbs and candle smoke and chalk. Doesn’t see anything but—

Carlo’s eyes and mouth snap open as he roars, his left arm slamming up. That’s the one on Lydia’s side and Talia still has Lydia by the hands—she instinctively hauls the woman towards her, over Carlo and away from that. Except the chains catch Carlo up and he jerks short. Doesn’t twist over, not like Talia’s expecting, and when she moves to avoid where she thinks he’ll be, she ends up ramming her knee into where he still is.

She loses her grip on Lydia, who also knocks into Carlo and falls back. Lydia already is flinging herself around, but Carlo managed to get the chain loose, if not completely unanchored, and Lydia has long hair. He catches some and yanks down, and then has her gripped by the throat before Talia can do more than get a hand to his chest.

And even then, Talia’s not centered over the heart, and if she moves it at all she’ll give him the space to crush Lydia’s windpipe. She’s panting, leaning over—she looks into those eyes and she snarls even before Mark’s voice comes out of Carlo’s mouth.

“How you greet me, huh?” her old lover says. “After all I did for you.”

“You went after our children, that’s what you did,” Talia says tightly.

“I did that because _you_ wouldn’t stand up for our pack,” Mark hisses at her. It’s him looking out, she’d know him anywhere, but they’re still Carlo’s corpse eyes, dull and rheumy. The contrast between them and the vicious, living malevolence emanating from Mark raises the bile in Talia’s throat. “Bitch alpha, just hiding away like an omega, pretending like being a little housewife would make you happy. I fell in love with you because you _fought_ , because you took what you wanted and damn your parents. I thought you’d _lead_.” 

Talia snarls, but even so, she can hear short, tight bursts, Lydia struggling to breathe. Her heart is sinking but she makes herself not look over at the other woman, makes herself keep her eyes on the man who took up so many years of her life, gave her three beautiful children, and then—threw that back in her face, as if all of that was less than trash.

“I did lead,” she grates. “You—you didn’t want to follow. You aren’t the pack, Mark, you’re not the start and end of it, and after what you did we don’t owe you a damn thing. If you didn’t fall in line, that was your own damn choice.”

“If you were a good alpha,” Mark says, lifting his head, his tongue flicking at his teeth like a struggling worm. “If you’d been any kind of alpha at all, you would have found a way.”

“Well, I _did_ ,” Talia says. “I did. I killed you and I kept my pack. Where’s yours, Mark? What did you keep? Nothing, because you’re nothing, nothing but a thing that should be dead and who the hell _cares_ what something like that thinks?”

Mark snarls at her. The dead flesh splits under the strain, bloodless slashes that just show the disgusting layer of yellow fat right under the skin. “I’ll _make_ you care—”

“Make me?” Talia says. “That’s your problem, Mark. You think it’s all about _making_ people, breaking them, turning them into your tools. I never let anyone else do that to me and I didn’t let you. And I loved you, I did, I would’ve done so much—but if you’d really loved me, you wouldn’t even have wanted that. I didn’t do that for you. You didn’t break me and you won’t break my pack and you won’t—”

“I’ll break her—” Mark roars.

 _Neck._ Something claps over both of Talia’s ears, keeping her from hearing that last word but she sees how it spits out of Mark’s mouth. She rears up as if he’s spitting acid, but the—hands, they’re hands and they’re digging their nails into the skin around her ears so roughly that they hold her in place. She smells her own blood and she looks up and she sees Lydia’s mouth, wide open and red shading to black, with just the hint of vibration in the shadowed back of her throat.

Lydia was gasping, but for the air, not out of fear. And now she’s gotten enough breath past Mark’s grip, and before he can make good on his words, she screams.

Even with her hands over Talia’s ears, the sound is—is—it feels like Talia’s insides are liquid and leaking out of every pore for a second. Talia sways and grabs at Lydia’s right hand with her own, grinding it against her skull, and she knows she must be hurting the other woman but she can’t stop.

Mark’s eyes roll back up and he convulses—an arc of movement at the side tells Talia he’s lost his grip on Lydia—with his torn lips seizing back from a strangely dry mouth. He’s a corpse, he doesn’t have the spit to foam up.

Kill him, Talia thinks, and before Mark can recover, she slams her hand down through those stitches. They part under her claws but a bone cuts her, is stubborn—Talia lets go of Lydia’s hand and grabs the sides of Mark’s split ribcage and just wrenches them open, open till she has the whole chest cavity before her and that heart. She plunges her hand down again, and gets her fingers around that purplish, bruised, disgusting thing, and rips it out.

And then he’s dead.

He’s really dead. The heart in Talia’s hand is already cold, gummy-feeling the way meat that’s been frozen and thawed out multiple times is, and the corpse splayed out under her is limp. Just more meat. And…and she’s not the magic-worker, but as she lifts her head, it just feels…calmer, quieter. Something’s gone out of the room and it’s all the sweeter for the absence.

“Still have to burn it,” comes Scott’s muffled voice.

Talia had forgotten about him, and about the others. From the way Lydia’s hands drop from Talia’s head, the other woman had forgotten, too. They sit in the ring with Carlo’s body as Scott gets up and walks unsteadily to the corner, then comes back with a pack of matches and an empty steel can.

It looks like he’d covered Deaton’s ears, while Chris had ducked his head between his knees and protected himself. There’s a little bit of blood trickling out of both of Scott’s ears, but when Lydia frowns and lifts her hand towards him, he bats her off. “It’s already healed,” he says, handing her the matches. “Not like it’s the first time, don’t worry about it.”

He gives Talia the can, and then steps back out of the ring. Chris, looking concerned and guilty, reaches up towards Scott and Scott lifts his hand as if to push him away, hesitates, then takes Chris’ hand instead, putting it over one ear so thin black veins start snaking over its back.

Talia looks down at the can. She drops the heart into it, on top of the burnables they’d stuffed into the bottom, and then tilts the can so Lydia can drop the match into it. Then she puts the can down on the floor and gets up, and takes Lydia by one arm to help her up, too. Lydia has a faint shadow of a hand outlined about her throat, though it looks like it won’t swell too badly.

“I just need some ice,” Lydia mutters. She lets Talia lift her to her feet, but then tugs so that she’s the one leading them out of the ring. “Ice and concealer.”

The room’s already starting to smell like cooked meat, in a very unappetizing way. Talia doesn’t mind getting away from that—Deaton’s staying to break the ring properly, pinching his nose with one hand, but Scott and Chris are also moving away—so she lets Lydia walk them to Deaton’s fridge. They dig out some icepacks and Talia stops Lydia from putting those directly against the skin, grabbing some paper towels to use as wrapping.

“I’m sorry about that,” she says as she bundles up the packs. “I was slow. I’ve been—God, I feel like I’ve been one step behind this whole time, and…if I hadn’t been, less people would’ve been hurt.”

“If anyone was ever actually ahead, I don’t think people would have invented time-travel spells,” Lydia sighs. She sounds very different from how she’s been, soft and slow and tired. And her posture’s slumped out of her usual shoulders-back, chin-up stance, not rigid but commanding. She looks at the pack until Talia hands it to her and then her eyes rise to Talia as she puts it against the side of her neck. “Look, you did the best you could, and it’s not your fault the world’s given you trust issues. Also, he was a parasitic jackass. Remember that and don’t listen to him.”

Talia looks at her. Lydia’s brows lift slightly, a little of her old challenge back, and suddenly Talia’s laughing.

“Still, I think I’m glad time-travel exists,” Talia says, shaking her head. She looks at the other woman again, then puts her hand up on the fridge door, noticing it’s not fully shut. Gives it the nudge it needs, and then moves to slide past Lydia. 

Then she pauses. She looks at the woman again, and they’ve been sharing the same house for weeks now, working together in desperate situations, and yet…it’s like she’s seeing Lydia for the first time again. Everything just looks so different now, when she’s not seeing a threat around every corner.

The world isn’t that much safer, Talia knows that. But she…she feels like maybe she’s gotten a better hold on it. Like maybe, just maybe, she’s come out with a little more than she went in with.

“No, I know I am. And you know, the magic, the extra knowledge, it’s all been useful. But the part that makes me glad you and Scott and Stiles are around is just…you make me feel better. You drive me insane, too, but you make me feel better. So thank you, Lydia. I’m glad you came, and I’m glad you’re here,” Talia adds.

She pauses, then leans over and presses her lips to Lydia’s cheek. The other woman is perfectly still for that, but Talia hears a very, very slight flutter in Lydia’s heartbeat. And when she draws back, Lydia’s looking at her a little differently, too. Like maybe, under all those strident demands and pointed comments, Lydia wouldn’t mind doing something besides constant defense. And maybe they might be able to look into that now. 

Though Talia doesn’t do that now. No, she walks out, because yes, she remembers they still have another step after the heart is fully reduced to ashes. She’s made her mistakes, and paid the price for them, but that all ends here and now. She’s ready to move on, her and her pack, and she’s making sure of it this time.


	8. Epilogue

“I think if anything is going to turn me evil, it’s going to be this,” Peter says, making a face at his glass.

Talia rolls her eyes, but offers him the plate of lime wedges. They already mixed the ash-water with plenty of sugar and lime juice, because neither of those will affect the efficacy and nobody here, even Deaton, is medieval enough to think there is a point in making magic more unpleasant than it needs to be. “You’re not going to turn evil. Now hurry up, the kids have already finished theirs,” she says, prodding Peter in the ribs.

Peter makes a face at her, and then glowers at the rest of them. “I’m going to drink it, do you really think I want to go through this all over again? You don’t need to stare like I’m going to pour it into the grass when you’re not looking.”

“But adorbs, what if we just feel like staring?” Stiles says, chin on hands, smiling with just a touch of sarcasm.

Lydia turns away, because she doesn’t need to see to know that Peter will blush and then down the glass in one swallow, while his sister and Stiles smirk at each other. For all that Talia still expresses the occasional reservation about Stiles, she has no compunctions about teaming up with him against Peter.

She’s going to take the kids’ empty glasses back into the kitchen, and then find some excuse to stay there, but when she stands up, she glimpses a dark and a blond head through the window, bent far too close to each other to just be chopping vegetables for the stir-fry dinner. She pauses, then stifles a sigh and sits back down, looking out over the back patio. Derek and Laura and Cora are happily playing with their multitude of new toys, thrilled to finally be allowed outside, and Peter and Talia are crossing over to them. Talia’s telling Derek to…not eat that, and Derek raises his head and even if he wasn’t guiltily brushing grass off his front, the greenish lips would give him away.

“Hey,” Stiles says, coming over to Lydia. He turns around the second patio chair and plops down in it, resting his elbows on his thighs and looking at her. “So, my sweep’s clear for the second week in a row, so Talia was thinking we’d head out to the house soon.”

“Do they need more things from there?” Lydia says, frowning. The house is already straining at the seams as it is, and even if they’re all much more comfortable with each other, the daily irritations of living together—with no imminent death threat—are starting to show. “We’ll have to rent a storage unit—”

“Yeah, uh, actually, I think Talia was going to mention that to you,” Stiles says, eyeing her. “She and Peter have been talking, and they’re not so sure they actually want to move out of town anymore, but they do want to live somewhere that’s not that place.”

Lydia eyes him back. “She did mention finding another rental. Although where we’ll find something with enough room…”

“Well, honestly, would it just be faster to build a new house?” Stiles says. “I was running some numbers, and they still have all that other land in the preserve, some of which is actually better-positioned in terms of, say, ley lines and easy access to local schools and malls and—”

“And…you are trying to convince me of this because…” Lydia says.

Stiles glances at the Hales, who don’t appear to be paying attention, but that doesn’t mean anything with werewolves. Then he sighs and scoots a little more towards Lydia. “Because I love and adore you, and I will always respect your choices but everything is a little dimmer when you’re not there—”

“Because nobody else notices when the bulbs are burning out,” Lydia mutters.

“—and I mean, I’m seeing the cordial chats and the way you guys aren’t spending half your time stepping on each other’s pride anymore, but just, Lyds, what does it _meeean_ ,” Stiles says, ducking and twisting his head along with his voice, as he reverts to his inner five-year-old. “I know you but you’re you, you know?”

Lydia rolls her eyes. And thinks she just glimpses a little twitch in Talia’s mouth. Peter certainly has given up and is pathetically resorting to using Cora as a shield so he can peer over her shoulder at them.

“It means that Talia just got out of a long-term relationship that degenerated to abusive and is reasonably gunshy about people with dominant tendencies,” Lydia says. She uncrosses and recrosses her legs, adjusting her skirt, and lets Stiles have his little frustrated groan and glower moment. “And I’ve only just considered that maybe, just maybe, we’re not perpetually on the verge of disaster, and I can take a few hours off.”

Stiles looks at her and she looks out across the lawn. Peter’s squatting down with Derek and Laura now, while Talia is standing up with Cora in her arms. Talia looks over at the patio and she’s not giving much away, but then, just the fact that she looked over says enough.

Lydia lifts two fingers from the chair arm and Talia moves her head as if she’ll just turn back to her family, but then—well, she does that, but first she nods. Not smiling, but not grim either. And honestly, Lydia still is sorting out how she feels about that, and what she wants to do about it, but…it’s interesting to have the time and the space to do that.

Interesting enough that she wants to work at making sure she keeps that time and space for long enough. “If we build from scratch,” she says slowly. “It’s going to take an age to find an architect who’ll either understand or keep his mouth shut. And longer to find a competent one.”

“Yeah, well, nobody’s buried yet,” Stiles says, very quietly. He looks at her a little longer, then laughs. Lets his head swing down so he’s looking at the ground between them, as he reaches out and just puts his hand over her wrist. “You know, for once. We got a while, Lyds.”

“We do,” she echoes. “You know…we do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God, this was so long. Teen!Peter is just that compelling, I guess.
> 
> And okay, I had some stealth notions about how cool it would've been if the show did more than just pay lipservice to the idea of female leadership, and really got into exploring how Talia became alpha (and, apparently, was a single mom on top of being a werewolf) and what her and Peter's relationship might have looked like. And maybe where they could've taken a couple different turns and come out a loyal, cohesive family rather than being at each other's throats. And then the time-traveling jokes and the aged-down Peter and I really, really didn't plan on so much wordage, or such a slow romantic build. But hey, there you go, writing doesn't always go as planned.
> 
> The original [ficlet](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6059890/chapters/15516595) for this.


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